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Golden Bells in Convent
Towers

OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY
St. Dominic and St. Catherine

J. M. J. D.

Golden Bells in Convent

Towers

The Story of Father Samuel
and Saint Clara

1854-1904

LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO
R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS COMPANY

1904

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M ^^^^ f'^ ><V^ v<26.,**^^W

DEDICATED

TO THE

HONOR OF OUR VENERATED FOUNDER AND OUR
BELOVED SUPERIORS

3lmpnmatur.

Arr!|bial|op of Uliluiaukfr.

St. Clara's " Convent Tower"

'Ye swelling hills and spacious plains!
Besprent from shore to shore with steeple towers,
And spires whose 'silent finger points to heaven. ' "

PREFACE

The first chapters of Father Mazzuchelli's Life Story, those
recounting its incidents up to the time of his departure from
Sinsinawa, are taken from his Memoirs. The succeeding chap-
ters contain information gathered from note-books and docu-
ments preserved in the archives of St. Clara Convent.

To keep within the bounds of Hmited space, the compiler of
this work has been forced to omit much interesting matter, but
such as appears, either in Father Samuel's Story or that of St.
Clara's Community, bears the stamp of truth and every state-
ment can be authenticated.

" It is not what people say of me, but what I am, that
counts," was the utterance of one of America's noblemen, under
the stress of adverse public opinion irrationally expressed.

We may say of him whose biography is here given, it is
what he was that counts, and hence we have made it our earnest
aim and effort to modify even our natural and lawful enthu-
siasm, to exaggerate no event, to magnify no ability or virtue,
but to portray the man of God as he really was, in so far as
his words and deeds revealed him.

In the midst of his lonely labors among the Indians, of his
pleasanter activities among the people of the Dubuque diocese,
of his responsible duties as president of a college, the thoughtful
reader will behold him displaying the sturdy greatness of the
true man, the holy greatness of the true priest.

In his fidelity to the simple duties of parish priest in the
little town of Benton, and in his unselfish devotedness to the
Dominican Community he had instituted, the sympathetic
reader will discover the nobility and tenderness of the true
pastor of souls, and the high-mindedness of the true religious
founder.

In whatever aspect any chapter of this book may present
him, or in whatever light it may cause the reader to look upon

8 PREFACE

him, Father Samuel Mazzuchelli will be recognizable as a
most interesting, admirable and lovable personality.

As for the brief history of the Dominican Community at
Sinsinawa, which is here given, its most interesting parts must
be read between the lines. Many a thrilling incident, many a
weary struggle, many bitter trials and rigorous hardships, have
not been mentioned, because cold print distorts such life-
pictures and gives them a false perspective. And yet, it is
just those parts of religious history that will be found inscribed
on eternity's great record by an angel's hand, and that will be
read by the Eternal Father through the crimson haze of the
Precious Blood.

S. C. B.

St. Clara Convent,

Sinsinawa Mound, Wisconsin,

March 19, 1904. Feast of St. Joseph.

Golden Bells in Convent Towers

INTRODUCTION

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TITLE

Since that dread hour when his intercourse with God in the
Garden of Paradise ceased, and he lost his power of perfect
expression, man has striven to multiply and to improve his
methods of communication with his fellow-beings. Nature's
mightiest forces have become the slaves of his impelling desire
to convey his ideas and express his emotions to another, speed-
ily and effectively.

It is man's craving for sympathy that creates the wish that
what he feels shall be as readily and as impressively expressed
as what he thinks. Language serves to conceal, rather than to
express his thoughts, and fails altogether to manifest his
stronger and deeper emotions.

Genius meets the difficulty in part by using other means of
expression in place of language. The artist makes his emo-
tional appeals to humanity through the medium of the canvas,
the colors, and the brush, as the poet does by means of the

lo INTRODUCTION

pen, while the musician accomplishes his purpose with the
instrument which responds to his touch.

Of the three, the last is the most effective, for there is no
emotion that music cannot excite, and none to which it cannot
give, very nearly, an adequate expression. Hence it is that
musical sounds, by whatever means produced, dominate the
finer impulses and loftier powers of our emotional nature to a
greater extent than does any other influence, aside from reli-
gion.

Among the instruments that give forth musical vibrations,
for the delight of the ear and the awakening of the soul, we
may include the bell ; but being possessed of neither the organ's
quivering columns of air, nor the harp's trembling strings of
varied quality, it is narrowed in the range of its appeal, and
restrained as to the possibilities of its expression. For it there
are no notes admitting of a multitude of harmonious combina-
tions, and making possible a myriad of tone-effects, and yet,
among the material forms wherein music is held captive, there
is none having so great a range of associations as the bell. Its
chief function, indeed, is to suggest to the mind that association
of ideas which revives and recalls, reanimates and reincarnates,
the fading, the forgotten, the dead and the ghostly things of
memory's realm.

For centuries the tones of the bell^ as heard in song and in
story, have thrilled the human heart with varied emotions. The
tiny, tinkling bells of Oriental adornment, the chiming bells
of tall minarets calling multitudes to prayer, the silver bells of
my lady's bower, in palace gay or castle grim, and the golden
bells of her steed's housings, or her falcon's hood, tell strange
tales of dancing slave-girls, of wild fanatics, of stately lords
and haughty dames. The solemn bells of cathedral spires and
abbey towers tell nobler stories of the Church's sway ; of reli-
gion's benign mission; of the victories of faith; of virtue's
triumph in kingly courts and on bloody battle-fields ; of glorious
heroism on the throne and of sweet saintliness within the
sanctuary.

Not only in story and in song have the bells their noted

INTRODUCTION ii

part, history likewise preserves their memory. In Mediaeval
Ages, the bells announced the Truce of God, and called together
the warriors of Europe to join the Crusades. In modern times,
the tocsin of a massacre has pealed forth at the midnight hour,
and bells have proclaimed the birthday of a great nation, the
liberty of a brave people.

In the events of civil history and in political strife, the bell
has taken its part with dignity and efficiency, but it is in the
domain of religion that it has always had its noblest mission
and its greatest power. Sadly, joyously, solemnly, has it made,
from stately towers and lofty spires, its announcements of
deaths, of weddings, of holiday services and feast-day celebra-
tions; sweetly, for many centuries^ and in many lands, has it
preserved the memory and declared the glory of the Incarnation
by the tri-daily summons of the Angelus ; and as an invitation
to piety or to the service of charity, it has never ceased to ring
from magnificent city edifices, from humble village chapels,
from lonely mountain shrines and from monastic hospices on
Alpine heights.

Oh, the bells! the wondrous bells! How their music
pleads, entreats, commands ! How truly it expresses reverent
worship and ecstatic joy, holy triumph and sacred exultation!

For the shelter of these many, many bells — with tones so
varied, with missions and meanings so diverse, with histories
and stories so strange and unlike — the great, the powerful,
and the good have built graceful spires and majestic towers.
Architecture, that kingly art, with a science for its soul, has
ever been zealous in aiding man to give proper housing to the
queenly bell; for without a tower the bell is a soul deprived,
as it were, of its opportunities, and the tower without a bell is
aspiration and ambition without an animating soul.

And now — but hark ! the Convent bell is tolling ; a novice
lies sleeping before God's Altar, her sweet young life of
eighteen years suddenly merged into a glad eternity. " The
tower bell " has called together a household of three hundred
persons to witness before God's altar to the loveliness of this
dear soul, a priceless gem, crystal clear, cut and polished, ready

12 INTRODUCTION

for its place in the virginal crown that rests upon the Sacred
Heart of our Blessed Lord.

Often, very often, has the great bell, during the twenty
years of its service, called together such assemblies to plead
for the blessed dead, more strange in their heedlessness of the
bells than in aught else pertaining to their dreamless sleep.
For the bells have no subjects so loyal and so prompt to obey
as the true religious, to whom the community bell is " the voice
of God."

The Convent bell tells of lofty aspiration, with its minor
tones of homely deeds well done; of noble intention, with its
solemn chords, the harmonious doing of life's greater deeds ;
of loving advancement in the interior and contemplative life,
a sweet accompaniment to the solemn hymns and triumphal
psalms of the consecrated, exterior, active life. All these God-
like things are found portrayed in " The Story of Father Sam-
uel and Saint Clara," and are symbolized by the expression
" Golden Bells in Convent Towers." For in every truly conse-
crated heart is suspended the " Golden Bell " of holy recollec-
tion, chiming the call to unbroken converse with God. And
in the solid massive " Tower " of true community life are hung
the great " Bells " of the community spirit, the spirit of the
Rule.

Throughout this sacred year the " Golden Bells " of St.
Clara's " Convent Towers " have been one while tolling the
solemn nocturnes of life's stern discipline; and again, ringing
the stately measures of a great overture to the noble oratorio of
the Community's Golden Jubilee.

St. Clara's religious children, their loyal hearts bowed in
hushed thankfulness and holy awe before the throne of God,
catch to-day faint echoes of heavenly music, for the protecting
angels of St. Clara's wide domain are joining with the Jubilee
Bells, and, in bursts of ecstatic song, are expressing the tumul-
tuous gladness of their exultant joy.

And when the Jubilee Year is past and the Jubilee Bells
are hushed, St. Clara's mystic bells will still peal forth, from

INTRODUCTION 13

Sinsinawa's mystic towers : " Golden Bells," symbols of sacred
ideas ; " Convent Towers," symbolic of holy ideals ; " Golden
Bells," inverted chalices of life's daily sacrifice, whence we pour
upon the altar of our high vocation the sacred libations of our
faith and hope and love !

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THE LIFE-STORY

Rev. Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli, O.P.

CHAPTER I

FATHER MAZZUCHELLI, MISSIONARY TO THE

INDIANS

Milan, the home of the wondrous Cathedral, the city of
palaces and of libraries, the Episcopal See of St. Ambrose
and of St. Charles Borromeo, is intimately associated with the
name of Father Mazzuchelli, not only as the place of his noble
birth, but as the environment that gave him his princely man-
ners and elegant tastes, that awakened his love for learning
and his spirit of piety, that inspired his dauntless courage on
fields of difficulty and of danger, and that enkindled his ardent
zeal for the spread of faith and religion. His forefathers, rich
bankers for generations back, had prided themselves less upon
their wealth, and the power it gave them, than upon their
scholarly attainments and their fidelity to the Church. From
them Father Mazzuchelli received that best of heritages, a fine
mind, a good heart, and a noble character.

Milan had unfolded his natural gifts, America was to
develop, exercise and perfect them, by taxing to their utmost
the great powers of his intellect, by constantly testing the
strength of his character and the nobility of his heart. In
Milan, gratifying his father's natural pride in him, he would
have become a successful business man, an influential member
of the best society, an edifying figure at religious functions
in the great Cathedral.

In America, he became the humble, unselfish religious, the
zealous, high-minded priest, the eloquent, persuasive preacher,
a fearless missionary among strange tribes and peoples, a suc-

i6 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

cessful builder of many churches, an inspired apostle to the
ignorant and the unbelieving.

In Milan, his sphere would have been small, his labor lim-
ited, his influence circumscribed. In America, his sphere was
the great Northwest, and there he became the saintly guide,
father and friend of multitudes, savage and civilized. Catholic
and non-Catholic. His influence became boundless, his fame
almost national. The youth of twenty had chosen well, for
time and for eternity, when he responded to the call for mis-
sionaries to America.

Father Mazzuchelli's childhood had been passed at his
mother's knee, in accordance with the law of old-time Catholic
households, and the wisdom of old-country Catholic mothers,
and his youth had been spent with various tutors, under the
daily and intimate supervision of his worthy father. Nor can
we say, with the picture of his after life before us, that such
training had been injudicious. In the sphere that awaited him,
to be innocent was to be strong ; to be pure minded was to be
powerful. Inexperience in youthful w!orldliness became the
grandest element of his later manliness. His eye was always
clear and dauntless ; it never wavered before savage, or sage,
or sinner.

The call of the divine Master has never been regardful of
the tenderness of family ties. Obedience to that call, whether
it be the soldier of the commonwealth or the soldier of the
Church who hears it, means the abandonment of all that the
human heart holds dear. And so the youthful Mazzuchelli,
with that mingling of joy and sorrow that ever fills the soul,
when the divine comes in touch with the human, disappointed
his proud father's hopes and grieved his fond mother's heart,
first by choosing to be a Dominican religious in his own coun-
try, and then by electing to become a missionary priest in far-
away America. He was young to make so brave a choice,
requiring, as it did, fortitude to renounce what he loved, and
courage to embrace what he well might fear.

But quietly, firmly, devoutly, he resolved to leave riches for
poverty; plenty for scarcity; congenial society for solitude

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 17

and loneliness ; the great city for the wilderness ; palaces for
wigwams ; cathedrals of marble and altars of silver for chapels
of logs and altars of bark.

For five years he had been studying as a Dominican Friar,
in Faenza and in Rome, when his superiors, in response to the
request of Rt. Rev. Edward Fenwick, O. P., Bishop of Cin-
cinnati, selected him for the American missions. With their
approval he set out, in June, 1828, to visit his home in Milan,
that he might take leave of his relatives and friends.

With a prophetic feeling that the separation would be long,
that time's changes in his home would be many and serious,
and that nothing there would ever again be quite the same,
he received the benediction of his parents, the tearful embrace
of his brothers and sisters, the sorrowful farewells of the old
servants, and departed from his father's roof, his strong soul
fired with noble resolves, and his brave, tender heart filled with
nature's bitter pain.

Having returned to his convent, after his farewell to Milan.
he left Rome for Lyons, France, in the company of the Vicar
General of Cincinnati. Circumstances required him to prolong
his stay in France, so he took up his abode in the " Little
Seminary of Saint Nicholas," and there he acquired that knowl-
edge of the French language which, after his ordination in
America, he found indispensable in the exercise of his ministry
among the Canadian French who inhabited northern Wisconsin.

It was on the 5th of October, 1828, when he finally set
sail from Havre for a new country, vast and strange, there to
find his new home. He took passage on the American ship
Edward Quesnel, bound for New York. The voyage was long
and stormy, but he was not disturbed, for his health was excel-
lent and his heart was fearless. With characteristic courage.
he had himself bound to the main mast during a most violent
storm, that he might see the ship '* at the mercy of contrary
winds, tossed from wave to wave of the foaming waters, a
helpless victim of the imperious billows." (Memoirs.)

On November 7th land was in sight, but another storm,
which succeeded a brief calm, raged for five days. The ship

1 8 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

was delayed and did not enter the harbor of New York until
November 14th. The young stranger was not favorably
impressed by what he saw during his brief stay in the American
metropolis. While admiring its material progress, he deplored
its moral retrogression, and found in the conditions that pre-
vailed, a proof that '' the grandeurs of this world, whether in
monarchies or in republics, are always in strict relationship
with a general corruption of manners." (Memoirs.)

Leaving New York he visited, to use his own expressions,
'' the beautiful city of Philadelphia " and " the venerable city
of Baltimore," on his way to Cincinnati, Bishop Fenwick's
episcopal city, which was the place of his destination. The
journey of eight hundred miles, which was to be made partly
by land, partly by water, presented many difficulties incident
to his ignorance of the country and of the language. He made
part of it . by stage, and with insufficient funds, but with a
perfect trust in God who had called him, and would be sure
to help him in an hour of need.

This trust was not betrayed ; an American gentleman, also
traveling by stage, had noticed the young foreigner's embar-
rassment, at the offices and inns, and by signs gave the infor-
mation that he would make all the arrangements, and pay all
the bills, until the journey's end, when the sum expended
could be returned to him. On arriving at their destination,
the courteous gentleman perceiving at a glance that the young
man had not sufficient money to reimburse his unknown friend,
hastened to tell him that the sum lacking could be given later
towards the building of the new church, the framework of
which they could see from where they stood. With musical
Italian words, that the gentleman could not understand, the
stranger endeavored to express his gratitude to the kind friend
sent to him by God, in response to his sincere trust.

Bishop Fenwick was a Dominican ; moreover, he had been
the secondary cause of the young foreigner's exile from his
sunny, native land to the inhospitable western territories of the
United States, hence he made his confrere doubly welcome,
and With great cordiality and sweetness, interested himself in

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 19

all that concerned him. The good Bishop desired the young
Missionary to devote himself particularly to the study of the
English language, and its acquirement occupied his mind much
of the time until Christmas of that year.

In accordance with the Bishop's suggestion, he then made
arrangements to visit the Dominican Convent of St. Rose, at
Springfield, Kentucky. From Cincinnati to Louisville, by
water, was a pleasant trip, but the ride on horseback, from
Louisville to Bardstown, thirty-eight miles without rest, was
very wearisome for one unaccustomed to such a mode of
travel. It is not surprising that his fatigue forced him, after
reaching the residence of Bishop Flaget, to take two days' rest
before he pursued his way to the Convent, fifteen miles distant
from the town.

Early in February, 1829, he desired to return to Cincinnati,
but was forced, by the breaking up of the ice in the Ohio River,
to delay for a week or more at Bardstown, where he passed
many pleasant and profitable hours in the company of Bishop
Flaget. In March he was able to resume his journey. Hav-
ing arrived at his destination, he returned to the Bishop's house,
where he made his home, and until September, he fulfilled
the duties of sacristan at the cathedral. Then he took up his
abode in the Dominican Convent of St. Joseph, Perry County,
Ohio, to prepare for ordination to the priesthood. There he
enjoyed not only the quiet and the retirement suited to that
preparation, but also many favorable opportunities for the
assiduous study of the English language. About the first of
the year, 1830, he began to give catechetical instructions in
St. Joseph's Church ; this afforded him excellent practice in
the use of correct English, and was a most beneficial exercise
in preparation for his chosen work of preaching.

In July, Bishop Fenwick ordained him deacon, and on
September 5, he was ordained priest, in the cathedral at Cin-
cinnati, after Pontifical High Mass. The sermon on that
occasion was preached by Rev. J. J. Mullen, who took for his
text the words ** Ajs the Father hath sent Me, so do I send
you." No expression could have been more appropriate, since

20 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

the newly ordained priest was to become a missionary to the
red men and an apostle to the white men of the wilds of
Wisconsin.

The Diocese of Cincinnati was at that time of such vast
extent, and priests were needed in so many places, the Bishop
was, for a time, undecided in what direction to send his zealous
new helper. Then came an urgent demand from the Catholics
of the northern part of the diocese, that a priest might be sent
to them without delay. In response to their request the Bishop
desired Father Mazzuchelli to depart immediately for the
Island of Mackinac, to labor among the Canadian French,
the mixed race, and the Indian tribes of Michigan and Wis-
consin.

Having crossed the entire state of Ohio, navigated along
the western coast of Lake Erie, passed the city of Detroit,
and traveled two hundred and fifty miles on Lake Huron, a
journey of eight hundred miles in all, the Missionary reached
the sought-for island. In a little village of about five hundred
souls, the greater number of them Catholics of Canadian origin,
he took up his abode. At least two-thirds of the Canadian-
French of the place were of mixed race, part Indian, part
French. Great was the delight of these people to have a priest
in their midst, and eagerly did they flock to hear him, on the
first Sunday after his arrival. Heretofore they had been
, attended occasionally by a priest from Detroit, but now they
were happy in having a resident pastor, though they knew that
he would be obliged to leave them frequently, in order to visit
the distant parts of his charge.

In November of that same year, 1830, he made the first of
his many journeys to the village of Green Bay, two hundred
miles distant from the island. Its population comprised one
thousand souls, and among them he found a Catholic people
of the same races as those on the island, and equally ignorant
of religion. There being no other place large enough for his
congregation, he celebrated the Holy Sacrifice in a granary.
Only a few of the long-neglected and ill-instructed people were
inclined to receive the sacraments. Long and earnestly did

"There's no Fun in March"

A Corner in the Sheepfold at Sinsinawa Mound

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 21

he work among them, and many a weary mile did he travel to
reach them, before he had the comfort and the joy of seeing
them reform their lives and begin to practice the sacred obliga-
tions imposed by the Catholic Church. He was not disheart-
ened, however, but quietly planted the seed of the Word, and
left it to God to give the increase.

Gathering around him the Indians of the locality, he spoke
to them, through an interpreter, words which bore good fruit
at a later time. God does not use the methods of the revivalist.
As the vegetable seed in the ground, so the word-seed in the
human heart requires time, warmth, moisture and sunlight —
the moisture of repentant tears, the warmth of charity, the
sunlight of divine grace, and time for germination and growth.
Father Mazzuchelli was always content to continue his arduous
labors, however gloomy the outlook, and to wait for the fruit
and the grain till God's appointed harvest time.

He returned to Mackinac on November i6th, and busied
himself untiringly with the instruction and spiritual progress
of his little flock. They came with commendable regularity
to hear him preach, but it was difficult to win them from their
long-continued indifference to the sacraments. Though he
devoted all his taste, skill and zeal to the proper celebration
of Christmas, but few received Holy Communion on that great
feast.

During the winter, he had occasion, repeatedly, to defend
the Church against persons who openly and offensively attacked
her. For this work he was singularly well fitted, and by his
forcible and logical treatment of disputed subjects, not only
won many souls from erroneous belief, but caused an increase
of piety and devotion among Catholics. The change for the
better among his own people was manifested in their greater
interest in parish affairs. They not only enlarged their little
frame church, but they built a small residence for the priest,
and took pains to keep both in repair.

On the occasion of his second visit, in May, 1831, he
reached Green Bay by means of a trading boat. Having no
church, he celebrated Mass in private houses, sometimes in

2 2 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

the living-rooms, sometimes in the attic; and always he
preached: exhorting and instructing; making religious prac-
tice attractive ; and enforcing the idea that duty to one's soul
is of paramount importance. As a consequence, the number of
those who received the sacraments steadily increased.

His labors among the Indians, at the time of this visit, were
singularly blest; and he had the happiness, before returning
to Mackinac, of baptizing twienty-three of the Menominee tribe.
This meant an assurance of a far greater number of converts
at his next visit, for each Christian Indian would, in the mean
time, devote himself, with untiring zeal, to the conversion of
others in the tribe. In the autumn of this same year, the
Missionary returned to the Menominee village, ^.nd spent two
months instructing the Christian Indians for the reception of
Holy Communion. He also opened a school for them, under
a master who could speak their language perfectly, besides
English and French.

Soon after this, Father Mazzuchelli began, with the erection
of a small edifice in Green Bay, that remarkable work of church
building, which, for many years, formed an important part of
his missionary labors. He visited the people in their scattered
homes, personally allotting to each individual, in accordance
with his circumstances, the kind and quantity of materials he
was expected to contribute to the construction of a small frame
church. The response to an appeal so moderate in its require-
ments was prompt and generous, and thus, in 1831, came into
existence the first church in that village which has since become
a city with several Catholic churches and a cathedral. In his
Memoirs Father Mazzuchelli mentions, in referring to this
work, many interesting details, for which we have not space in
this little book.

The summer of that year was spent in visiting, in the vicin-
ity of Mackinac, his numerous flock of mixed race, so widely
scattered and so difficult to reach. These people soon learned
to value their immortal souls, by seeing so many proofs of the
value the holy priest set upon them. These men of the wilder-
ness and the wild lake shores were wonderfully clear-headed;

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 23

their ideas were few, but they were definite, and when they saw
this poHshed, educated gentleman enduring every kind of
physical hardship, and an unutterable mental loneliness, not
for material gain for himself, but for the spiritual gain of
others, utter strangers to him, and often his enemies, they
were all profoundly impressed, and many of them were effect-
ively attracted to the faith and practice of the Church.

In August we find him, in a fragile bark canoe, following,
for ninety miles, the northern shore of Lake Huron, and the
course of the majestic St. Mary River, as far as Sault Sainte
Marie. Here he landed, and, standing under the shade of a
stately oak, he preached, as did the apostles of old, under the
blue sky, to the people seated upon the grass. Many times,
in the few days he spent there, did he thus address the people
in this, " one of God's first temples." A few confessions,
several marriages, and many baptisms of children made up
the slender harvest of this first visit to a people long deprived
of the ministrations of a priest. The non-Catholics of the
place showed him many courtesies. The commandant of the
American fort invited him to dine, and a soldier gave him the
use of his apartment in the fort, that he might preach to the
officers and their families, though there was but one Catholic
among them. The scholarly dignity of his appearance, the
singular charm of his manner, and the wise graciousness of
his words always won for him, all through life, not the mere
toleration, but the sincere respect and friendliness of non-
Catholics.

When the brief, cool summer was over, he returned with
pleasure to his little home beside the church in ]\Iackinac.
There he felt a longing to receive the Sacrament of Penance,
and to hold intercourse once more with a congenial mind,
and so he departed for Arbe Croche, on an inlet of the extreme
northern part of Lake Michigan. Arrived there, he held con-
verse for a few short days with the saintly Father Baraga,
missionary to the Ottawa Indians. These devoted men, both
lonely and isolated, and both leading lives of heroic sacrifice,
far from kindred and friends, met each other with inexpressible

24 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

emotions of joy and consolation. In his Memoirs, Father
Mazzuchelli describes his journey over the ice-bound waters
of the lake, in company with a few Indians, and tells how they
passed the bitter January nights on beds of pine twigs, beside
a fire that gave most of its heat to space. The Priest said his
beads ; the Indians sang hymns ; and then, in spite of much
physical discomfort, all slept the sleep of peace.

Finally they arrived at the place where the venerable
Father Baraga dwelt, and found it a sort of earthly paradise
of religious practice. Think of a village where the whole
population arose, in the morning, at the sound of the Angelus
bell, and in a few minutes repaired to the church for morning
prayers and the Holy Mass ! To behold such a scene gave
the visitor unspeakable joy. Refreshed and comforted by his
brief sojourn in Father Baraga's holy little village, the Mis-
sionary labored with renewed zeal on his return to his own
flock, and had the delight to number among them, in the spring
of 1832, more than fifty Indians, converts from paganism. To
attract the Ottawas, Menominees and Chippewas of northern
Wisconsin to his church, the Father had, on Sundays and
Festivals, the Vesper psalms sung alternately in Latin and in
Indian. It proved to be an admirable device, bringing many
within the sphere of his influence whom otherwise he could
not have reached. His converts were faithful and edifying.
The tender devotion, humility, modesty and simplicity with
which these savages approached the sacraments of Penance
and Eucharist were most consoling to the indefatigable worker
in the cause of their salvation.

Two hundred Catholics of various races and as many
pagan Indians inhabited at that time a place that is still called
St. Ignace, and these were a part of Father Mazzuchelli's
charge. He visited them from time to time, making the short
journey of three miles by water in summer and on ice in
winter. By persevering kindness and attention, he finally made
an impression on them. The Festival of Easter, 1832, brought
abundant grace to many of these people. There were more

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 25

than a hundred communicants that morning, some of whom
had been absent from the sacraments for forty years.

After this consoUng experience, the Father repaired once
more to Green Bay, and spent nearly two months there attend-
ing the spiritual needs of the French population. The Menom-
inee Indians, his converts of the previous year, had been
watching eagerly for his return, that they might receive the
Sacrament of Penance and Eucharist, and that sixty new con-
verts might be baptized.

On his return to Mackinac, in July, Father Mazzuchelli
was rejoiced to find that his revered friend and spiritual
father, Bishop Fenwick, had arrived in his absence, and
intended to remain with him some little time, not only to
administer Confirmation, but to aid him in conducting special
exercises for the spiritual benefit of his people, and of the many
Catholic traders who frequented the island at that season of
the year.

Some of these traders had traveled seven or eight hundred
miles to sell their furs at that point. Nearly all of them were
Catholics by birth, but having seen neither priest nor church
in many years, their faith was dead. To revive it, in those
who had become careless, was a more difficult task, very often,,
than to kindle it newly in the heart of a pagan Indian. The
venerable Bishop and the earnest young Priest heard the con-
fessions of hundreds and sent them on their way rejoicing,
fully determined to persevere in their resolve to lead a better
life.

It was the last time that these devoted friends worked
together, nor did they meet again. The Bishop, so dear to
his priests and people, died at Canton, Ohio, on his way
from Mackinac to Cincinnati. To the young Priest, in a land
still strange to him, this was a serious bereavement. The one
tie that had replaced those of his distant home was rudely
severed ; but his was a brave heart, and a brave heart's way
to comfort, at such hours, is redoubled prayer and multiplied
labors.

26 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

On August 15th, he had saluted his beloved Bishop, having
little thought that it was for the last time, and had departed
for a second visit to Sault Sainte Marie. The most noteworthy
event of this visit was the renewal in his presence of thirty-
two marriages in six days. In the absence of a clergyman,
and because of the hopelessness of finding one in that wild
country, the parties had contracted marriage, with parents and
friends as witnesses of their solemn promise, and with the
intention, in most cases, of being married by the priest,
should one appear. To remove every excuse from the way of
these renewals of the marriage vow, no fee was asked or
accepted by the priest. The blessings of this visit of the devoted
Missionary w-ere likewise extended to the Chippewa Indians,
many of whom were baptized.

The journey from Sault Sainte Marie to Mackinac, from
there to Green Bay, and from Green Bay to Prairie du Chien
was neither easy nor pleasant in those early days, but the
spiritual needs of the old Mississippi town were imperious.
Hence the Father followed, on horseback, as speedily as pos-
sible, through dense forests and over wild prairies, the narrow,
tortuous path, called an Indian trail, that he might reach the
people who were so greatly in need of his ministrations.

It was the middle of September, 1832; peace had just
been proclaimed between the whites and the fierce Sac and
Fox Indians; traveling, therefore, was less dangerous than it
had been for a long time previous, but the Priest and a
friend, a judge of the Circuit Court, who accompanied him,
had sufficient exercise for fortitude and courage, without
meeting unfriendly Indians. Riding all day, sleeping on the
ground at night, getting lost while going around impassable
swamps, hollowing little boats from trees and crossing rivers
in them, while the horses swam to the shore, these were fre-
quent incidents of this, as of many other journeys that the
Missionary made in the cause of religion and for the salvation
of souls.

Finally, the weary travelers reached Prairie du Chien in
safety and with more than ordinary pleasure, on September

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 27

22, 1832. There Father MazzuchelH met opportunities for the
accomplishment of every sort of spiritual work, for the people
had been served, only at rare intervals, by a priest coming from
St. Louis, a distance of six hundred miles. There was no
church in the town; Father MazzuchelH^ his own station
being four hundred miles distant, could not visit the place
often enough to superintend the building of one, hence he did
not then attempt the work, but collected the people in houses
and in public halls where he exhorted and instructed them,
and where nearly all of them received the sacraments.

In the mean time, two Redemptorist Fathers, to Father
Mazzuchelli's great joy, had been sent from Cincinnati to
minister to the people of Green Bay. Hence he did not delay
there when returning from Prairie du Chien, but, in Novem-
ber, crossed immediately to the island, nearly losing his life in
a violent snow-storm. As on many similar occasions, he was
divinely protected, and reached his little home without having
suffered any permanent injury.

It seemed to him a long time since he had enjoyed the com-
fort and happiness of receiving the Sacrament of Penance,
hence soon after his safe return to Mackinac, he departed for
Father Baraga's holy village, in company with ten Catholic
Indians on their way to Arbe Ccoche. In the Memoirs will be
found a beautiful description of their voyage across the lake.

After a visit full of the joys of spiritual ministration, given
and received, a visit signalized by friendly intercourse with
a thoroughly congenial mind, the Missionary set out, in Decem-
ber, to make the return journey to the island on snow-shoes, a
mode of travel so entirely new to him that he experienced,
after a time, a weakness of the knees so painful that he was
forced to permit his young Ottawa guides to carry him to
an abandoned hut, where he rested for an hour. Having par-
taken of a scanty midday meal of roasted corn and flour por-
ridge, he and his companions resumed their snow-shoe journey,
and after spending the night in the cabin of a poor Canadian
hunter, soon found themselves on the shore opposite the island.
They had scarcely crossed over to it when the weather changed

28 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

suddenly, and the ice broke up. This, preventing the return
of the four Indians to their homes across the strait, gave
Father Mazzuchelli the doubtful pleasure of their company
for two weeks in the cramped quarters of his tiny pastoral
residence.

In accordance with a wish that Bishop Fenwick had
expressed, shortly before his death, Father Mazzuchelli
departed, on April i6, 1833, to visit the Winnebago Indians
of Wisconsin. Having spent a few days with the Redemptorist
Fathers at Green Bay, he went westward, on horseback, for a
distance of a hundred and ten miles, to a village eight miles
from Fort Winnebago. Here he found a tribe of ferocious
savages, far more fierce and immoral than either the Ottawas
or the Menominees. Their language, which differed greatly
from that of the neighboring tribes, lacked all words corre-
sponding to our most important religious terms, thus pre-
senting an insuperable obstacle in the way of their instruction,
until compounds of their words were arranged to express
supremely important Christian ideas.

The Priest's life among these wild red men was very labori-
ous, and his first visit to them not very successful, for they
were hard of heart and difficult to win from their evil ways.
A second visit, made in August of that year, after a journey of
over three hundred miles, on horseback and by boat, bore more
abundant fruit. Crossing to the western side of the Wisconsin
River, he took up his abode, for a time, among these fierce
people, and endeavored to learn their language.

The reflecting reader may reaHze in some slight degree
what it meant for a gentleman of Father Mazzuchelli's high
birth, refined education, and fastidious tastes to dwell in the
wigwams of the Winnebagos, jarred upon by their detestable
habits, partaking of their vile food, and protecting himself
against their savage ferocity. Nothing daunted his strong
spirit, however, and so, in three months, fifty children and
adults were ready for baptism. When these, his converts from
a most debasing paganism, had reached the number of two
hundred, he went to Detroit, a distance of seven hundred miles,

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 29

to have printed, in the Winnebago language, a small volume
of eighteen octavo pages, containing the essential prayers
and doctrine of the Catholic Church. While the Father was
thus engaged in behalf of his red children, events were shaping
themselves that were to have a remote but profound influence
over his whole future, and through him, over the future of
many others.

When the Diocese of Detroit was founded, and Mackinac
was no longer under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Cin-
cinnati, the Vicar Provincial of the Dominican Fathers in the
Province of St. Joseph, wished to recall Father Mazzuchelli
to the Diocese of Cincinnati, where he had been ordained, and
where the Dominicans had their home. The Father having
finished his arrangements in regard to the printing of the
" Orcangra Aramee Wawakaka," or '' Winnebago Prayer-
book," was about to accede to the request for his presence
at St. Joseph's when the Bishop Elect of Detroit insisted
on retaining him in the new diocese. The Vicar Provincial
yielded, and Father Mazzuchelli, at the request of the newly
appointed Bishop, preached, every Sunday in October, in the
Detroit cathedral, in French at late Mass and in English at
Vespers.

In November, the Redemptorist Fathers having been
appointed to another place. Father Mazzuchelli became resi-
dent pastor at Green Bay; his duties included missionary
work among the Menominee Indians. As pastor, he offered
the Holy Sacrifice and preached twice on Sundays and Fes-
tivals, and administered the sacraments whenever required.
As missionary, he devoted himself untiringly to the instruction
of the Indians, principally by means of interpreters. He did
not try at this period to study the Indian language, because
such study would have occupied too much of the time that he
felt in duty bound to devote to the instruction of the widely
scattered French and English speaking people who had been
confided to his pastoral care.

The early part of 1834 was spent in making visits to the
cabins of the Indians near Fort Winnebago, on the west side

30 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

of the Wisconsin River. Only by these personal visits to
them in their wigwams could he reach these wandering sheep.
Since they would not come to the shepherd, he went in search
of them, and thus won them to enter the fold.

Later in the year the Missionary again visited the Win-
nebagos near Prairie du Chien. His interesting experiences
while among them may be read in his Memoirs. With the
desire to visit his Dominican brethren in Ohio, he left Fort
Winnebago late in the winter in company with a trader, in
whose sled he rode a hundred and fifty miles on the ice of
the Wisconsin River to a place whence, by crossing a point of
land, he reached Prairie du Chien, in February, 1835. Hav-
ing administered the Sacraments of Penance and of Eucharist
to the white inhabitants of that town, and baptized a number
of the red men, he resumed, in April, his missionary journey —
such he had made it by his ministrations along the way
— and proceeded on horseback as far as Mineral Point, a
small village in Wisconsin. Here a gentleman requested him
to baptize his three children and to preach in his house. This
was work exactly to the Missionary's taste. As he was mount-
ing his horse next morning, the gentleman put twenty dollars
into his hand. " God be thanked ! " exclaimed the Priest,
" without this I could not have proceeded for a tenth part of
my long journey to Ohio."

This visit to his brethren at St. Joseph's Hjouse of Studies
had long been the object of his thoughts and desires. He had
undertaken the journey without sufficient means, but with his
usual unshaken trust in God's providence, which had not
failed him. Now he could go on his way without fear of
awkward delays. A ride of forty miles brought him to Galena,
Illinois, the center of the lead-mining business of that time.
The city of Dubuque, Iowa, was then a very small village.
Neither of these towns had a church or a priest, though there
were three hundred Catholics scattered through the country
around Galena, and quite a number resided in and about
Dubuque.

Father Mazzuchelli interrupted his journey to minister to

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 31

these people. Here, as in the northern part of the state,
Catholics, so long without the visible signs and symbols of
their faith, had grown indifferent to the practices of religion.
The sacraments had ceased to be of vital importance to them,
hence but few went to Confession and still fewer received
Holy Communion. Many children were baptized, however,
and these, at a later day, formed fervent congregations. Even
then, a resident clergyman could soon have aroused the sleep-
ing faith of the people to a zealous accomplishment of good
works.

Indeed, they urged Father Mazzuchelli to remain with
them as their pastor, but he, not being authorized at that
time to assume the charge, pushed on towards St. Louis, five
hundred miles distant. His brief sojourn with Bishop Rosati,
of holy memory, was signalized by its spiritual consolations.
Continuing his way along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, he
traveled an additional five hundred and fifty miles before reach-
ing Cincinnati, where he paid his respects to the zealous Bishop
John Purcell, and then rode one hundred and fifty miles further
to reach the Dominican convent at Somerset.

Here he took counsel of his brethren of the Order of
St. Dominic regarding the continuance of his missionary labors
in the north, neither he nor they knowing that this same ques-
tion was then pending at the Dominican monastery in Rome.
It was considered best by his brethren in Ohio for him to
return to those labors in the Northwest which he had, with
God's help, made so successful. This decision meant for him
another tedious journey of one thousand three hundred miles
to the Upper Mississippi, where he arrived on the 4th of July,

1835.

The determination of the Bishop of Detroit to retain him
in his diocese, and the advice given him by the Dominican
Fathers at St. Joseph's, caused Father Mazzuchelli to remain
in the Northwest and, finally, turned his footsteps towards the
labors and the honors God held in reserve for him. The
Catholic people of the growing cities of Galena and Dubuque
had been making plans, ever since his visit to them, to secure

32 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

Father . Mazzuchelli's permanent residence among them. They
accompHshed their purpose by addressing themselves directly
to his superiors at San Sabina, in Rome, representing their
great need of a pastor, and requesting the appointment of
Father Mazzuchelli to the charge. The most Reverend Father
Giacinto Cipolletti, Master General of the Order of Preachers,
promptly replied to their request and most graciously granted
it, conferring upon Father Mazzuchelli, at the same time,
important powers, and granting him special privileges that
would aid him greatly in supporting his accumulating burdens
and responsibilities.

Thus was God's will made known to him, after he had so
anxiously sought to learn it. He went the more joyfully to
these people, who needed and so greatly desired his care,
because his services were no longer indispensable to the tribes
and people of northern Wisconsin, several priests having
recently offered themselves for labor in those missionary fields.

CHAPTER II

FATHER MAZZUCHELLI, PASTOR AND BUILDER

OF CHURCHES

Here we begin a new chapter in the devoted Father's life.
Those lonely years in the desolate north had been fruitful in
many a strong gift for his own soul, as well as for the souls
that had been in his care. That which had been sp unpleasant
and so difficult in the doing, was to become sweet and consoling
in the enjoyment of memory.

In his Memoirs, the Father tells us that he had so trained
his imagination that, when he was in the midst of some diffi-
culty of rough travel, it would turn spontaneously to memory's
beautiful pictures of things that he had seen in Europe, on those
occasions when he had visited the churches and sanctuaries of
Florence, Bologna, Milan, Genoa, Turin, Lyons, Paris and
Rome. And so when " he found himself alone, without a
church, in unbelieving lands, and deprived of all those exterior
objects that excite piety, the holy recollection of things seen in
Catholic lands helped him to bear his loneliness and longing.
When about to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice in a hut of logs,
or in an Indian wigwam, on an altar made of bark, he would
imagine himself present at the sacred rites of the churches in
Europe, and, uniting in spirit in the solemn Canticles of divine
worship worthily environed, he would lose his distaste for his
rude surroundings, because almost unconscious of them." Now
he will have a new set of memories, and as he labors among
white men, will recall with joyful satisfaction the fruitful days
spent with the wild red men of the Wisconsin forests.

New work of a more congenial nature awaited him, and
would give new zest to life. He had unbounded faith in the
civil and religious possibilities of the great Northwest. Hence
it was with renewed zeal and a brighter hope that he began

34 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

his work in Galena and Dubuque, among people desirous of
intellectual and moral improvement, and capable of great
temporal advancement.

The earnestness with which they had sought to secure his
sacred services had proved his people's appreciation of his
ability to accomplish a great work in their midst ; their subse-
quent readiness to co-operate with him in his zealous efforts
for their spiritual welfare was a constant incentive to him,
and a deep consolation.

He often referred, in terms of warm admiration, to the
generosity displayed by the people of Dubuque County. He
had excellent opportunities to test it, for he was architect,
superintendent and collector for the first Catholic church built
in Dubuque. The corner-stone was laid on August 15, 1836,
and the church was dedicated towards the end of October,
under the patronage of St. Raphael. A complete account of
his efforts in behalf of this work, and of the generosity of the
people in giving him support, may be read in his Memoirs.

His attention was divided between the transaction of these
important affairs in Dubuque and the construction of a church
in Galena, the corner-stone of which was put in place on
September 12, 1836. A few feet of the wall of this edifice
stood, without additions, from 1836 to 1839. In the mean
time, a small frame structure was built. It was dedicated in
November, under the patronage of St. Michael, and served not
only as a chapel, but as a residence for the priest. In 1839
the stone edifice was completed, and the name of St. Michael
transferred to it. A few years later it was destroyed by fire.

Father Mazzuchelli's labors were not confined to the
interests of religion in Galena and in Dubuque, his zeal and
responsibility kept him busy in other directions also, for his
missionary field comprised, at that time, southwestern Wiscon-
sin, northern Illinois, and the whole territory of Iowa.

The liberty granted to Catholics by the United States
government was frequently the subject of a fervent expression
of Father Mazzuchelli's admiration. In the first Legislature
of Wisconsin, which met at Belmont, Lafayette County, in

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1836, there were thirty-six Protestants and only two CathoHcs,
yet Father MazzuchelH, devoted and uncompromising CathoHc
priest, was chosen to be chaplain of that body. Because of
many other demands upon his time, calling him to the distant
parts of his mission, he served only one week, during which
he opened the exercises each morning with prayer, and on
one occasion made an address to the House, in presence of the
Governor.

At that time, the nearest priest resided two hundred and
ten miles from Dubuque, and his station was so difficult to
reach in winter that Father MazzuchelH found it easier to
follow the Mississippi River, for five hundred miles to St.
Louis, that he might receive the Sacrament of Penance before
Christmas.

January, 1837, was spent in working among the people of
Dubuque and Galena ; February was devoted to the Catholics,
savage and civilized, at Prairie du Chien. In April, he again
visited his Confessor in St. Louis, to fulfill the Easter obliga-
tion. When returning, he stopped at the fort situated on Rock
Island, to celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and then,
crossing the river to Davenport, he administered the sacra-
ments to the only Catholic family in that vicinity.

On another occasion, after spending several days near Rock
Island, he wished to resume his journey, but found the steamer
icebound. The length of the delay being as uncertain as was
the possible condition of the weather. Father MazzuchelH, in
company with other travelers, undertook to walk the rest
of the way, and after three days of tramping across an unin-
habited country, and three nights of sleeping on the ground,
reached Galena in safety. Referring, in his Memoirs, to this
painful experience Father MazzuchelH recalls, with expressions
of warmest gratitude, the reverent generosity of one of the
travelers, an Irishman, who, on one of the coldest nights
deprived himself of covering, that the Priest might be better
protected, and did this when the Priest was asleep, so that the
self-sacrificing act of kindness might not be refused. We can
hear him saying, when gently rebuked in the morning, " Arrah,

36 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

Father, what difference if I had frozen? But had you frozen,
how many would grieve and suffer loss to their souls ! "

The sufferings of the Missionary on this occasion did not
hinder him from taking another long journey that same winter.
His interest in the good people of Galena and Dubuque had
not rendered him forgetful of his dear savages in northwestern
Wisconsin. Hie longed to learn how they had fared since his
departure from their midst, and so he undertook to reach them
in a one-horse cutter and without any companion. Through
dense forests and across wide prairies, along the course of ice-
bound rivers and over frozen lakes, on roads always difficult
to trace and often invisible, this was no pleasant trip, even
with congenial company. But alone, amid a silence that could
be almost felt, alone, in an ice-bound, snow-covered, wind-
swept solitude, unbroken for miles by any evidence of human
life — it would have been appalling, had he stopped to think
about it as a personal matter, instead of regarding it as the
necessary price to be paid for the spiritual health of precious
and exceedingly needful souls.

Indeed, the Priest felt himself well repaid for any suffering
he had endured in trying to reach his red children, the Chris-
tian Indians at Lake Winnebago, for he found them, after his
long absence, faithful to his teaching and happy to receive once
more his priceless spiritual ministrations. All through the
western part of Wisconsin, he ministered to the souls of the
white men and of the red men of his former flock, and then
returned, encouraged and consoled, to his new charge in
Galena and in Dubuque.

April of that year found him in Davenport, then a new city,
where he began the erection of St. Anthony's church, which
he had the happiness of seeing finished in the spring of 1838,
and given to the care of a resident priest some time in 1839.

On December 10, 1837, Rev. Mathias Loras was conse-
■crated first Bishop of Dubuque. Soon after, he departed for
Europe to secure pastors for the wide fields of his diocese.
Father Mazzuchelli had been appointed Vicar General, an
office he held for fifteen years, and was now empowered to

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 37

act as administrator of the diocese during the Bishop's absence,
which was prolonged by various causes until April, 1839.

While in Rome, May, 1838, Bishop Loras requested the
Master General of the Dominican Order to permit Father
Mazzuchelli to continue his labors in the new diocese, com-
prising all of Iowa and a part of Wisconsin, where he had
already accomplished so much. The request was readily and
cheerfully granted, with high esteem for both the prelate and
the priest. That two bishops, not of his own nationality, should
have been so energetic, at two periods of his life, in securing
and in retaining Father Mazzuchelli's services spoke volumes
for their value. The Master General was not slow in perceiv-
ing this, nor wanting in generous acknowledgment.

Verily, the young Missionary had made a diocese to which
the new Bishop might be welcomed. Over its wide expanse
were dispersed, among a much greater number of Protestants,
three thousand five hundred Catholics. When Father Mazzu-
chelli had come to them, in 1835, they were without church,
priest, altar, sacraments, or evangelical teaching. He had
since then built three churches for them, establishing among
them, thereby, religious worship and the observance of divine
and ecclesiastical precepts. He had also induced them, by
the hundreds, to receive the sacraments regularly. He had
preached to them the truths of Catholic doctrine and had
given them familiar moral instructions, with visible and
abundant fruit. He had lessened the prejudices and corrected
the false ideas of Protestants regarding the dogmas and prac-
tices of the Catholic Church, and among the numbers he had
baptized, there were five adult Protestants and many children
of non-Catholic parents. All this was sufficient, surely,
to occupy the time, the zeal, the whole mind indeed, of one sole
priest, isolated and without the least exterior aid.

Though ignorant of each other's personality, Bishop Loras
and Father Mazzuchelli had corresponded for two years re-
garding the affairs of the diocese. When the former returned
to America, the latter was most eager to meet him. With
the hope, then, of accompanying him to Dubuque, for the

38 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

Festival of Easter, the Father went, early in spring, down
the Mississippi to St. Louis. He was warmly greeted by his
kind friend. Bishop Rosati, who accompanied him on horse-
back to a distant village, where Bishop Loras and Father J.
Cretin were preaching a mission to people of French origin.
In our after-knowledge of the two noble personalities, we feel
certain that the meeting between the Missionary and his Bishop
was, for both, the occasion of profound emotion. At once
each must have recognized the exalted individuality of the
other, and at once they loved each other, as did David and
Jonathan. Then was formed that priestly and sacred friend-
ship between them that enriched Hfe and ended only with
death. Since he had to await his Bishop's convenience. Father
Mazzuchelli was glad, perforce, to prolong his pleasant stay
in the South.

The venerable Bishop of St. Louis requested him to assist
in celebrating in the Cathedral the solemn rites of Holy Week,
and to preach on Good Friday. To spend Holy Week in a
well-established cathedral parish, and to enjoy the society of
a venerable bishop and several priests while serving a large
congregation of intelligent and educated people, was a favor as
unexpected as it was profoundly appreciated by the Priest, so
accustomed to isolation and loneliness. Both mind and soul
were refreshed. Moreover, his return to Dubuque was made
glad by the thought that henceforth he would not be alone,
that there would be other consecrated workers in the field,
where he had been so long the only laborer.

On April 21, 1838, he had the happiness of being present
at the installation of the first Bishop of Dubuque. The occa-
sion was celebrated with due solemnity, Rev. J. Cretin and
Rev. A. Pelamourgues, the newly arrived missionaries, assist-
ing in the ceremonies. Father Mazzuchelli preached an appro-
priate sermon to a large audience of Catholics and Protestants.
The spontaneous eloquence of the reverend orator, " proceed-
ing from a heart stirred and overflowing with joy, stole into
the hearts of his Christian hearers, awakening there a tender
gratitude to God, who, in order to pour upon them more

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 39

copiously His infinite mercies, had in their church erected an
Episcopal Chair." " Thus after four years of isolation and of
various spiritual privations, the Missionary found himself sur-
rounded by the sweet and edifying presence of other evangeli-
cal workers, from whom he would be separated only during
the space of a few months, when the duties of his ministry
called him into the more remote parts of the vast diocese/'
(Memoirs.)

After the installation. Bishop Loras immediately set him
at work superintending the construction of an episcopal resi-
dence and the completion of the cathedral. Every Sunday he
officiated and preached in Galena; every Monday he returned
to Dubuque, to urge forward the work on the buildings.
In May, he conducted spiritual exercises in St. Raphael's
Cathedral, to prepare the people for the reception of the
Sacrament of Confirmation, to be solemnized in their midst
for the first time on the Feast of Pentecost. Thus he kept him-
self constantly employed in work for God and souls, taking no
rest and having no pity on his poor, wearied body.

We are not surprised, then, that the Feast of the Assump-
tion, August 15th, found the Father too ill, of a malignant
fever, to be present at the consecration of the cathedral, though
it was truly the crowning of his own hard and lonely labor,
begun long before there was any thought of a bishop coming
to Dubuque. The cause of his failing health is not far to
seek. We will quote from his Memoirs.

" The State of Illinois, in 1838, employed several hundred
workmen in the construction of a railway that was to extend
from Galena to the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers,
that is, across the entire state, from the northern extremity to
the most southern border. The greater number of the work-
men in the vicinity of Galena were Irish and German Catholics.
Unfortunately, intermittent fever prevailed among them that
year, and many of the poor laborers lost their lives. It was
thought that the chief cause of this fever was the high water
which had that summer inundated numerous small islands in
the Mississippi, and a considerable part of the low grounds

40 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

contiguous to the river. When the waters subsided, in the
month of August, the decayed vegetation sent forth a deadly
odor which permeated the atmosphere, creating widespread
disease. Whatever the cause may have been, there were fever
patients in almost every house, and within two or three months
nearly one hundred and fifty persons died."

The Missionary was called at all hours of the day and night
to visit the sick, often ten, twenty or thirty miles distant from
his house. In those sections, as in all missionary countries,
the Viaticum was carried in a pyx, or little gilt box, which was
worn suspended from the priest's neck, and concealed under
his outer garments ; in this way the Missionary often had
resting upon his heart, for several days and nights, the Most
Adorable Mystery of our Faith. Such a device becomes
necessary in non-Catholic countries, in order not to expose
the Holy of Holies to the contempt of unbelievers. It was
a similar motive which induced the first Christians to make
a secret of their belief and not to reveal publicly to the pagans
the doctrine of the Eucharist.

During this dangerous epidemic, the Priest, on his visits
to the sick, had always to be provided with the Most Holy
Sacrament for the dying, to whom he was often unexpectedly
summoned while passing along near the public works. The
houses temporarily put up to receive the poor day laborers
consisted of one room, in which they slept, twenty or thirty
together; and so destitute of help were they, that many, no
doubt, died of starvation. Great was the Priest's consolation
to find in some of them, stretched upon straw, dying, abandoned
by all the world and in direst misery, a rare piety, the fruit
of a Christian life.

On the other hand, who can express the deep spiritual joy
of those souls on beholding near them God's priest, with his
power to give them absolution, after hearing their last confes-
sion; God's priest, from whose consecrated hands they might
receive the Holy Viaticum and the healing Sacrament of Ex-
treme Unction. So often, indeed, did the devoted missionary
find himself the unexpected bearer of grace and joy to the

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 41

dying, he exclaims, '' Truly does the dear Lord know His
friends, and never does He forget them. All else may fail,
but God never fails those who hope in His infinite goodness
and mercy ! " And in proof of this, the Father tells that on
one occasion, when he had carried the Holy Eucharist to the
dying, he found it necessary to divide the last sacred particle
he had in the pyx into four parts, that he might give the
Viaticum to three other loving souls, who had ardently desired
but had not dared to hope for it, thinking there was not a
priest within many miles of them.

In the autumn of 1839, Bishop Loras had ordained to the
priesthood the three seminarians whom he had brought from
Europe; one of them, the Reverend Father Remigius Petiot,
a native of France, was sent by him to Galena, as assistant
to our Missionary, who thus found himself at liberty to go,
with an easy mind, to other parts of the vast diocese where his
services were greatly needed.

In the month of November, he traveled by land to the new
city of Davenport, where Reverend Father A. Pelamourgues
had been stationed as pastor. Thence, continuing his journey
he arrived at the city of Burlington, which is, by the usual
road, about one hundred and eighty miles from Dubuque, and
like the latter, had its origin in 1833. Its situation on the
great river was a promise of its future growth and importance.

The territorial government of Iowa held its sittings that
year in the Methodist Church at Burlington, a fact that the
Father did not forget at a later day. Although the rising city
estimated its population at about two thousand persons, the
Missionary succeeded, after many inquiries, in finding among
them only twenty-^even Catholics, and some of these were from
the surrounding country. The first Mass in Burlington was
celebrated in the cabin of a German Catholic family on the
17th of December, 1839. After offering the divine mysteries
the priest, turning to speak to the congregation, and seeing
so small a number of the faithful present, found, in the sweet
words of the Redeemer, " Fear not, little flock, for it hath
pleased your Father to give you a Kingdom," (Luke xii, 32),

42 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

the subject of a sermon that was a great consolation to his
listeners, and a potent medicine for his own heart, that felt so
keenly the grievous spiritual privations of his people. On this
occasion he also visited some Catholics residing about twelve
miles from Burlington, and administered the sacraments to
them, after which he returned to Davenport.

In order to render as useful as possible so long a journey
in the depth of an unusually cold winter, everywhere that a
favorable occasion presented itself, he preached the Catholic
doctrine, always supplementing his sermon, however, with
those moral reflections which tended to make his efforts more
persuasive. In a village called Rockingham, he had, for two
evenings, a very large audience of Protestants, who instead
of being offended at hearing their objections to the Church
explained away and the contradictions of their own religious
belief clearly presented, took the greater liking to him for his
kindly efforts to enlighten them. A similar impression was
made at Savanna, a small village in the State of Illinois. In
the summer of that year, he preached several times, in various
localities, before large assemblies in the open air, under the
shade of his favorite tree, the majestic oak, and most encour-
aging were the effects and results of these impromptu
meetings.

Among others, who received the ministrations of the Mis-
sionary at this time, were several Irish families that had settled
in a place twenty miles from Dubuque called Maquoketa, from
a river that waters it. These people, trying so earnestly to
earn the bread denied them in their persecuted native land,
had a peculiar attraction for the tender-hearted Priest, and he
thought it his duty, in the beginning of the year 1840, to return
to this place and endeavor to erect there a small church. Be-
cause of the abundance of timber in the vicinity, he decided
to build the edifice of that material. He distributed among
the forty-two men who lived in the neighborhood of the little
tow)n the work of preparing, during the long winter, a great
number of beams, from twenty to forty feet in length. In
spring each man brought to the site of the church the work

. GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 43

of his hands, and as they were not able to help with money,
these faithful people contributed, in various ways by labor,
to lighten the cost of building their church. Bishop Loras,
from the benefactions of the Propagation of the Faith in
Europe, paid the sum of six hundred dollars for materials and
for wages to workmen. The church, when completed, was
dedicated to St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, and became
the pride and joy of the devoted people, who could feel that its
erection was entirely due to their own self-sacrificing labor.

The excellent results that followed this feeble beginning
were most encouraging, for the number of Catholics, who
settled in the neighborhood of the church, was so great that
in a very short time the ground surrounding it, on which were
built many pleasant homes, had all been sold. When the
first service was held in the little church, in the summer of
1840, there were not more than a hundred Catholics in the
congregation ; three years later, the parish of St. Patrick, reg-
ularly served by the zealous priest. Rev. J. C. Perrodin, had
a school, and its congregation numbered six hundred souls.
" It is a fact to be zealously considered," wrote Father Maz-
zuchelli, " that a church in the wilderness, where service is
held at least occasionally, becomes in the western states a
point of reunion for Catholics, especially for the Irish and
Germans, who thus form regular colonies." " For this reason
there are many places in America which are called Irish set-
tlements and German settlements, where the homes of the
people are always to be found clustered around the church,
the nucleus of the village, or of the future city."

It would be a weariness to the reader to attempt a minute
account of the frequent journeys, many hundreds of miles in
length, that were made by the priest, in 1840, on the Missis-
sippi River and by land. We will be content with speaking
of two churches that were built by him simultaneously, though
in districts quite distant from each other.

It has been stated already that, in 1839, Bishop Loras laid
the corner-stone of the Church of the Archangel Gabriel at
Prairie du Chien, in the Wisconsin Territory. The work on

44 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

this building, which had ceased for a few months, was resumed
in 1840, and Father Mazzuchelli, as architect and superintend-
ent, found it advisable to repair to the place, several times
during the year, to direct the workmen, and to incite the con-
gregation to lessen the cost, by contributing the necessary ma-
terials. To procure the rock required for a building measuring
50 by 100 feet, the men of the parish worked in the stone
quarries, and the reverend superintendent assisted them. It
was the month of June, and the weather was unusually warm,
yet the devoted Priest continued this severe toil for a number
of days, thus inspiring the people, by giving them an efficacious
example of unselfish love for souls and of great zeal for the
glory of God's house. However, in spite of his earnest efforts
and the people's generous co-operation, the work could not
have been completed had not Bishop Loras come to the rescue
by nobly sharing, with this distant congregation, the money
contributed to the needs of his episcopal city by the Propa-
gandas of France and Rome. With fourteen hundred dollars
given him by his right reverend friend, and with the materials
gathered by the people, to say nothing of the results of his
own labors, the Missionary was enabled to complete the pretty
stone church that was so long the principal building in the
village of Prairie du Chien.

The erection of one church in a year was not, it would
seem, commensurate with Father Mazzuchelli's capacity for
work, for in the city of Burlington, Iowa Territory, a Mis-
sissippi River town, about three hundred miles from Prairie
du Chien, he planned another church and superintended its
construction in that same year. He could remain at his work
only a few days at a time, being obliged to go to and fro,
repeatedly, between Burlington and his missions at Mineral
Point, Dodgeville and ShuUsburg. But without much delay
the church was built, and his heart was full of consolation
when he beheld it, happily completed, on a beautiful eminence
in the heart of the young city. The number of the faithful
in this town had been so small, their surroundings so full of
non-Catholic, if not anti-Catholic, influences, and their spiritual

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 45

advantages so meager, that his heart had yearned over
them with sadness and anxiety; it was now correspond-
ingly relieved, and he rejoiced at the thought of the many
precious religious opportunities St. Paul's church would afford
his beloved people. It was built of brick, and had a basement
intended for a priest's dwelling and for a school. The location
was very desirable, though the most elevated part of the land
secured for parish buildings had been reserved for a future
church of greater size, to be built when the Catholic popula-
tion of the growing city should increase.

In the autumn of 1840, Bishop Loras departed from
Dubuque to make a visit to his old home in Mobile, Alabama,
and Father Mazzuchelli, his Vicar, accompanied him as far as
Burlington, where the Bishop took the boat which was to
convey him to his destination. The Vicar was left in charge
of the diocese until the spring of the following year. On their
way to Burlington, the Bishop and his companion had visited
several Catholic congregations and had ministered to them.
Among these were the people of a little village called Charles-
ton, situated on the western bank of the Mississippi.

After taking leave of the Bishop, the Priest repaired to the
beautiful city of Davenport. The people having expressed a
wish to hear an exposition of the principal points of Catholic
belief contested by Protestants, he devoted himself for eight
nights to satisfying their laudable desire. The fruit of these
lectures was the establishment of friendly relations between
the Catholics and their Protestant neighbors, and the efface-
ment of much of the prejudice that everywhere existed against
the Church.

Being informed that government land was to be sold, in
the rising capital of the state, for church purposes at very
low prices. Father Mazzuchelli hastened from Burlington to
Iowa City, in December, 1840, and, depositing $2,000 with
the proper persons, secured, by an Act of Legislature, one of
the best lots in the town.

The Holy Sacrifice was offered for the first time in Iowa
City, on December 20th by Father Mazzuchelli, in the house

46 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

of a German mechanic. In the evening of the same day he
preached in the dining-hall of a small hotel, and on the fol-
lowing morning, he offered Mass ten miles outside the city,
in the unfurnished log-cabin of an Irish laborer. Christmas
and its succeeding holidays were spent in ministering to the
people of Galena and Dubuque, after which he returned to
Burlington.

On the lot that had been secured in Iowa City, in 1840,
the erection of a church was begun the following year; the
corner-stone was laid on July 12th by Bishop Loras; in tHe
summer of 1842 Father Mazzuchelli had the edifice ready
for divine service. In the mean time, he had said Mass, heard
confessions, and preached many sermons in private houses.
He had also given controversial discourses before large audi-
ences of many creeds in a hall that served between whiles as
a court of justice. At Bloomington and Bellevue, towns on
the western side of the Mississippi, between Dubuque and
Davenport, he built small wooden churches that were dedicated
in that year under the patronage of St. Matthew and St.
Andrew.

Some time in the previous year a pretty little frame church,
dedicated under the patronage of St. Matthew, had been erected
in Shullsburg, a small town in the lead region of Wisconsin.
The pieces of timber of which the edifice was constructed had
been prepared and wrought by carpenters in Galena, and then
transported to Shullsburg, where several workmen speedily
put them together on a plot of land in the midst of the homes
of the Irish miners, whose generous contributions from their
slender earnings paid the entire expense.

His frequent journeys and many fatiguing labors caused
Father Mazzuchelli, in the summer of 1842, to be attacked at
Iowa City by a serious illness which threatened his life. After
a slow recovery, though still weak and easily wearied, he
devoted himiself throughout the winter to the organizing of
St. Paul's parish at Burlington. While in that city he preached
dogmatic sermons every Sunday evening to audiences including
not only Catholics but Protestant lawyers, judges and ministers.

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 47

Everything concerning religion was of vital interest to him, and
his zeal for the spiritual welfare of persons outside the Church
was indefatigable, hence we are not surprised to learn that,
desiring to see and converse with the famous prophet, Joseph
Smith, founder of the Mormon sect, he paid a visit in February,
1843, to Nauvoo, Illinois, where the heresiarch had his resi-
dence. To Father Mazzuchelli '' the prophet " portrayed the
entire system of Mormonism, giving a history of its origin and
progress, and an explanation of its principal tenets, all of which
Father Mazzuchelli discussed with him, but, so far as any one
knows, without making any lasting impression upon his dark-
ened mind.

Having made his glad return to a more wholesome atmos-
phere, the Missionary remained in Burlington until the first
week of Lent, when he set out for Galena. Part of this journey
was made in a sleigh on the frozen Mississippi. The cold was
intense, the thermometer showing, as the average daily tem-
perature, ten degrees below zero. We have seen the Father
taking so many journeys under equally distressing circum-
stances that we, like the people of his time, take it as a matter
of course that he should do these things, and give no thought
to the possible effect. And yet, successive winters of such
exposure, with laborious summers in between, must have been
a tremendous strain on even the strongest constitution. He
was not given, however, to the consideration of health, to the
skirking of difficulties, or to the shunning of hardships ; and
besides, he was hastening to a new work that had presented
itself to his mind, and he would not delay to count the cost.

The Irish and German farmers and miners at Sinsinawa
Mound, Wisconsin, had need of a church, and it was in keep-
ing with Father Mazzuchelli's decisive promptness that he
should have one ready for them that very summer of 1842.
It was built according to his own design, and he named it
after St. Augustine. This was the Father's first footprint,
as it were, on the sands of those more important paths that he
was to tread during the succeeding twenty years. The parish-
ioners of St. Augustine's church had been aided by their Prot-

48 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

estant neighbors, who had generously contributed towards the
payment of the debt incurred for its construction. A beautiful
eminence near " the Mound " had been chosen for its loca-
tion. The pretty little frame structure made a very attractive
appearance, and was frequented by a goodly number of farmers
and miners with their families. This was the simple beginning
of a great work, the initial letter as it were of a great prophecy.

Weakened by a recent serious illness, and wearied by years
of strenuous labor, besides frequent and difficult journeys,
Father Mazzuchelli began to realize that his health was becom-
ing seriously impaired. For this reason he did not remonstrate
when his physician, seconded by his friends, urged him to take
a trip to Europe. This trip was really taken, however, with
more important objects in view than a restoration to health.
The cordial consent of the Bishop to his request for leave of
absence strengthened his purpose, and so he hastened his prepa-
rations, and departed after Easter, 1843, ^^^ Milan, Italy.

Being at that time quite unprovided with funds he relied on
Providence for the payment of his expenses. The parishioners,
persuaded that the journey was not taken for selfish reasons,
but for the welfare of souls, thought it their duty to assist in
furthering the good work by contributing to it a sum of money,
which was certainly a God-send to the Priest. Bishop Loras,
being obliged to repair to the city of Baltimore in order to
assist at the Triennial Council of the Bishops of the United
States, took his Vicar w:ith him to serve as his theologian at
that solemn assembly, and thus was the priest, without expense
to himself, speeded onward in his journey to the seaboard.

On the sixteenth day of April, after baptizing two converts
from the Anglican Church, Father Mazzuchelli, leaving Galena,
went down the Mississippi by boat, and landed four days later
at the city of St. Louis. There he met the Bishop and they
embarked on a beautiful steamboat which speedily carried
them to Cincinnati. The freedom with which religion was dis-
cussed, according to the custom in America, kept the Mission-
ary quite occupied, during the entire journey, in satisfying the
demands of those who, through curiosity or a desire for

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 49

instruction, wished to know something about the true doctrine
of the Church.

At Cincinnati the Bishop and his companion changed boats
for the city of WheeHng, from which point they traveled by
stage to Cumberland, where they took the train. In eight
hours, including delays at the various stations, they alighted
in the city of Baltimore. The population of Baltimore was esti-
mated, at that time, to be about one hundred and sixty thousand
souls ; forty or fifty thousand were said to be Catholics ; there
were ten churches besides the cathedral, which was not then
completed. Father Mazzuchelli describes, in the following
terms, the great event that called them to Baltimore :

'* The Provincial Council of 1843 was opened on the four-
teenth day of May ; the procession of priests, in number about
forty, and of fourteen Bishops with the Archbishop, Most
Rev. Samuel Eccleston, all vested in sacred garb, according
to their rank, issued from the Archbishop's house, and, having
made the circuit of the exterior inclosure, entered the church
through the large door and took their places in the Sanctuary.
A Pontifical High Mass was chanted, followed by the sing-
ing of the Veni Creator, after which the opening of the Council
was formally announced. The Bishops held their private ses-
sions every morning for a week in the house of the Metro-
politan ; in the afternoon they came into the sanctuary of
the cathedral, where were present the theologians of each
diocese and the superiors of the regular orders in America.
The theologians who had accompanied the Bishops were
divided, for the considerations of questions, into companies of
five. The questions to be discussed were proposed, one to
each company, by the Right Reverend Promoter of the Council.
Each theologian presented in writing, at the next meeting, his
discussion of the question assigned him. All the answers to
one 'question were debated before another question was con-
sidered. Every one was free to say what he thought ; in this
way the various points of ecclesiastical discipline were dis-
cussed freely by the theologians in the presence of the prelates,
who in their private sessions set forth the decrees of the Coun-

50 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

cil. On the fifth Sunday after Easter, May 21st, the order of
the procession of the preceding Sunday was repeated, and the
Pontifical Mass being over, the Bishops, in cope and mitre,
beginning with the oldest in the episcopate, passed, one after
the other, to the gospel side of the altar, where, with his own
hand, each subscribed to the decrees, after which the Te Deum
was sung. The erection of new episcopal sees and the choice
of their Bishops constituted an important matter for considera-
tion; in fact, it was the most interesting subject considered at
the Triennial Council of that year. All the acts of the Council
were, of course, subject to pontifical approval."

Providence prepared for our Missionary a rare traveling
companion across the ocean, in the person of the Rt. Rev. G.
Chabrat, Coadjutor Bishop of Kentucky, who was going to
France. Therefore, after embracing the most worthy Bishop
Loras, of Dubuque, the Father left Baltimore, on the 226. of
May, going by rail to Philadelphia, and departing for New
York the following day. At three in the afternoon, on the
25th of May, Feast of the Ascension, Bishop Chabrat and his
companion embarked in the steamship Great Western, and
before night the land of America was lost to view.

On June the 5th the coast of Ireland was visible, and on
the 7th, at six o'clock in the morning, Bishop Chabrat and
the Missionary landed in the city of Liverpool. That same day
they entered London, where Father Mazzuchelli was deeply
impressed by human grandeur carried to its height and human
misery reaching its lowest depths. On the 14th of the
month they arrived at Paris, where the Bishop, as if aware
that his companion had not sufficient means, paid all the Mis-
sionary's expenses from Liverpool to Milan. After a brief
stay at Paris, Lyons and Turin, Father Mazzuchelli found
himself in his native city on the Feast Day of Saints Peter and
Paul. His joy may be left to the imagination of the reader.
The real object of his visit and the success that attended it
become known to the reader in the course of certain chapters
that follow.

Before entering upon that period which forms a new and

1'^%^^;,,?^

Minims' Rock Sixsixawa

*€l^% .t

On the South Slope of the Mound

' We hail in each rock a friend's famihar face,
And clasp the mound in our mind's embrace."

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 51

distinct era in Father Mazzuchelli's life, let us briefly sum-
marize the principal events of previous years. The following
statements and the dates that appear in it are taken from a
brief journal written by the Father himself.

Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli was born in Milan, Italy, on
November 4, 1806. H;e received the Dominican habit in 1823,
taking the name of Brother Augustine, and made his solemn
profession as a Dominican religious at the Dominican Convent,
in the city of Faenza, Italy, December 6, 1824.

He was then sent to Santa Sabina, the Dominican monas-
tery in Rome, to continue his studies under the most favorable
circumstances. To Santa Sabina came Rt. Rev. E. Fenwick,
O. P., who, in speaking of America to his brethren, deplored
the small number of laborers in the missionary fields of the
western territories. Noting the intelligent interest of the
young religious, Brother Augustine, the Bishop begged the
Master General to permit the zealous young man to become a
missionary in the Diocese of Cincinnati.

On the 30th of May, 1828, Brother Augustine left Rome
intending to depart immediately for the United States, but did
not sail until October 5 of that year. In the mean time he
visited his home in Milan and spent two months at a convent
in France, acquiring a knowledge of the French language.

He arrived in America November 14th, being then a
sub-deacon. He was ordained deacon in St. Joseph's Church
Somerset, Ohio, by Rt. Rev. E. Fenwick, O.P., in June, 1830,
and by him was ordained priest in September of the same year
in Cincinnati. In October the Bishop sent him as missionary
to the Island of Mackinac, Michigan. From there he traveled
at stated intervals to the missions of Green Bay, of Prairie du
Chien, and of other parts of Wisconsin, teaching the tribes of
Menominee, Chippewa, and Winnebago Indians, and training
them to become practical Catholics.

In 1836 he came to labor in the western part of the Terri-
tory of Wisconsin, in Galena, Illinois, and in Dubuque, Iowa
Territory. In 1843 ^^ P^i^ ^ visit to Milan, his native city.
After having traveled in Tyrol, in England, and in France,

52 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

also through Italy to Rome, he returned to the United States
on August I, 1844, and arrived at Galena September 12 of
the same year. Here he met General Jones and purchased the
Sinsinawa property. With this purchase Father Mazzuchelli's
circumstances and designs changed materially, and his life
began to flow in new channels.

He had lost none of his energy, however, and his love for
hard work had not grown cold. In the course of the winter
of 1844 the wooden church erected at Sinsinawa in 1842, on
the southeast corner of the present church property, was taken
apart and the materials moved up to " the Mound." By April,
1845, it had been put together again with such care and skill
as to show no marks of the rebuilding it had undergone. The
painting and plastering were finished on August 2d, and the
church was solemnly blessed on August 3d, by Rt. Rev. John
M. Henni, first Bishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The name
was changed on that occasion from St. Augustine's to St.
Dominic's church. There was a large attendance of people
from the surrounding country, and from the cities of Galena
and Dubuque.

The Feast of St. Dominic was celebrated on the following
day with all the solemnity possible to time and place. Father
Mazzuchelli sang the High Mass, at which Bishop Henni and
eight priests were present — a wonderful assembly for those
days. Such a number of clergymen had never before been
seen together in any one place in the Territory of Wisconsin,
or in that of Iowa.

Their presence, and that of the Bishop, on the occasion
of the dedication of a little country church, and the celebration
of its patronal feast day, spoke volumes for the esteem in
which they held Father Mazzuchelli. In response to his invi-
tation, they had come from a distance, in spite of the many
difficulties that traveling then presented in the territories of
the Northwest, to encourage the zealous priest, whose worth
they recognized, and to give evidence of their high regard for
the man whose sterling character and scholarly attainments
they so sincerely admired.

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 53

That first celebration of August 4tli at Sinsinawa, inaugu-
rated a long series of such events, for it has been renewed
annually from that day, in 1845, to this, in 1904. For almost
two decades the Dominican Fathers and their pupils, students
of "Sinsinawa College for Boys," made the day glad; for
almost four decades the Dominican Sisters and their pupils,
students of " St. Clara's Academy for Girls," have continued
to make the Feast of St. Dominic an occasion of thankfulness
and great joy.

That first tribute of love and honor paid to the great
Founder of the Dominican Order, on the historic Mound,
seems to have won his powerful patronage for the beautiful
spot where the homage was offered. He then made it his
own, and though the vicissitudes of time have spared neither
it nor the institutions that at various dates have made it their
home, yet St. Dominic has never relinquished his claim ; rather
has he continued to strengthen it by increasing there the work
and the number of his children. The solemn blessing of St.
Dominic's Church, and the solemn celebration of St. Dominic's
day, in 1845, was the first step towards the accomplishment
of a great work, the beginning of a steady progress towards
the realization of lofty educational and religious ideals.

CHAPTER III

FATHER MAZZUCHELLI, RELIGIOUS AND EDU-
CATIONAL FOUNDER

Having learned by his own experience the urgent need of
missionary priests in the thinly settled parts of the vast West-
ern territories, and foreseeing that, even in those places hav-
ing resident pastors, it would be desirable, from time to time,
to have religious exercises conducted by missionaries. Father
Mazzuchelli conceived the idea of founding, at Sinsinawa,
a Dominican Missionary House, from which priests might go
forth to do every kind of missionary work.

Connected with this house, he purposed having a college
for the education and religious training of the young men of
the broad region extending north and west of Galena and
Dubuque.

Furthermore, he had formed the intention of establishing a
community of Dominican Sisters, for the teaching of day
schools and the conducting of academies for the education
of girls.

It was his idea to found a community that, while practicing
the Dominican rule and obeying the Dominican authorities,
should consist of members gathered from that part of the
country wherein they were to labor. Such persons would
better understand the needs and the spirit of the people they
were to aid and to edify. Thus the young community,
indigenous to the soil, would grow as the great West grew,
becoming inspired with its spirit, adapted to its intellectual
requirements, a part, as it were, of itself, and identified with
its religious and educational progress.

No branch community, from a trunk, however worthy,
having root in a different soil, absorbing a different atmos-
phere, and growing amid different surroundings, would have

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 55

answered the requirements of Father Mazzuchelh's far-reach-
ing idea. And so we shall find, when we read the history of
the community, that of those few persons, devotedly good and
earnest though they were, who came from distant convents to
join the little band, only one remained. She had a thorough
knowledge of religious training, of conventual discipline, and of
the Dominican traditions; she imparted this knowledge to the
young community, and herself imbibed from them and their
holy director that peculiar spirit which was ever to distinguish
Father Mazzuchelh's Sisterhood, and to stamp it as a distinct
religious institute, having a character and a personality that
would forever mark it as the special creation, under God, of
a great mind and noble heart. It was to be of native growth,
not the transplanted cutting from another's tree, however
majestic or fruitful.

With these ideas occupying his thoughts, with the design
of his new work already outlined in his mind, he made the
European trip to which we have already referred, and while
at the Dominican monastery of Santa Sabina, in Rome, com-
municated all his plans to the Master General of the Dominican
Order, the Most Rev. Father Thomas Ancarani, who gave
his plans a full and cordial approval, and conferred upon him
the discretionary powers he would require in the fulfillment
of his important undertakings. The Master General himself
suggested that, as the work progressed, and as various unfore-
seen exigencies arose. Father Mazzuchelli should apply to the
Superiors in Rome for advice and for the support of their
authority, thus securing for his institutes pennanent stability,
and an unbroken union with the chief house and highest
Superiors of the Order. Letters and documents preserved
in the archives at St. Clara Convent prove that, at every
important crisis in his work as a founder. Father Mazzu-
chelli responded to that suggestion, and never failed to receive
from Most Rev. Father Thomas Ancarani, and his successor,
Most Rev. Father A. V. Jandel, prompt, sympathetic, and
efficient support.

On his return from Europe to America it happened, in the

56 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

providence of God, that Father Mazzuchelli met, in Galena,
Illinois, on September 12, 1844, Colonel George W. Jones, the
owner of the beautiful property called Sinsinawa Mound, and
finding him disposed to sell it, purchased it with part of the
funds that had been given him by his relatives, at the time of his
recent visit to his home, in Milan, Italy. '' The object of such
purchase," we find recorded in Father Mazzuchelli's own
writing, "is to prepare the way for a religious community of
missionaries of the Order of St. Dominic, I having to that
effect received all the necessary faculties while in Rome. On
this property is also to be located, if such shall be the will
of God, a great college, not merely to instruct children in all
literary branches, but principally to educate them in the fear
of God."

This estate, situated in Grant County, Wisconsin Terri-
tory, comprised eight hundred acres, and was purchased for
six thousand five hundred dollars. General Jones, then a
Colonel, U. S. A., delivered the deed to Rev. S. Mazzuchelli,
on October 3, 1844, in the town of Galena, Illinois, before a
duly authorized lawyer, and received the sum of two thousand
three hundred and forty dollars in cash and four thousand one
hundred and sixty dollars in promissory notes. These notes
were paid in five installments, with interest, November 4
and 25, 1844; March 8, 24, and 28, 1845. Father Mazzu-
chelli writes of them, " The payment of the notes due on the
Sinsinawa property has been a work of much uneasiness ;
only an unbounded confidence in Divine Providence could
cheer one's mind under such circumstances." His earnest
appeals to his friends in Milan had their effect. His sister,
Josephine, " a holy virgin of Christ " he calls her, and his
generous friend, Count James Mallerio, a jeweler, sent him
the greater part of the sum required ; from Rome, and from
a friend in Wisconsin, he received the balance ; thus did March
28, 1845, fi^'i the estate free from debt.

Towards the erection of St. Dominic's Church, at Sinsinawa,
he had paid, from his personal funds, six hundred dollars ; also
for vestments, sacred vessels, and other altar furnishings, six

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 57

hundred dollars ; the balance of the debt on the church was
paid by the generous contributions of the struggling and hard-
working miners and farmers, who were ever ready, as far as
their small means permitted, to aid their beloved spiritual
Father in his noble undertakings.

The first one to join Father Mazzuchelli in his work at
Sinsinawa was Brother Joseph Polking, a native of Germany,
a man of simple earnestness and fervent zeal, who endeared
himself to Father Mazzuchelli by his many excellent qualities,
and rendered him great service in the humble duties of the
small* establishment. Others joined the Brotherhood, from
time to time, and members were received into the First Order,
which comprises priests only.

In 1846 the east wing of the college building was com-
pleted. It was built of limestone rock, quarried on the prop-
erty, and was commodious and comfortable, far beyond what
was common in the West at that time. The institution was
incorporated, March 11, 1848, with university privileges, by a
special act of the Legislature. Having a corps of excellent
professors, under the presidency of the scholarly Father Mazzu-
chelli, Sinsinawa College had the approval of the local Church
authorities, and the confidence of parents whose sons, men in
distinguished walks of life, have been heard to boast that they
were educated there.

Before closing this chapter it may be well to note Father
Mazzuchelli's relations with Rome, and the ready recognition
he received when presenting petitions to either the Pope or
to the IMaster General.

In view of his foundations at Sinsinawa, the documents
that follow will prove interesting. While in Rome, in 1843,
he presented the following petition to His Holiness, through
the Master General of the Order of Preachers, and received
the appended response :

58 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS,

PETITION

" To our Most Holy Father:

" The General of the Order of Preachers humbly represents
to you that Father Samuel Mazzuchelli of said Order, Vicar
of the Bishop of Dubuque for fifteen years, Missionary in the
United States of Almerica since 1828, desires to establish an
independent House of Novices of the Order of St. Dominic, in
the city of Galena, Diocese of Chicago, therefore, prostrate
at the feet of Your Holiness, he asks for this undertaking the
Apostolic Authority. Because of the scarcity of priests in these
missions, he likewise requests the faculty of permitting the
novices of said novitiate to sleep outside the convent, and to
perform the duties of a missionary, when their Superior shall
deem it necessary.

" Finally, he asks of Your Holiness permission for these
religious to wear a garb or habit similar to that of the secular
Catholic clergy of the United States."

RESPONSE TO THE PETITION

** At an audience, on November 16, 1843, the Holy Father,
Gregory XVI., by Divine Providence Pope, referred the above
petition to me, the Secretary of the Sacred Congregation of
the Faith.

'* Having considered this petition, and the conditions of
place and circumstances set forth in the document of the
supplicant, we graciously grant all his petitions.

" Neither the Bishops nor the Constitutions of the Order
shall interfere with these things unless His Holiness expressly
repeals them.

" Given at Rome, from the Office of the Sacred Congrega-
tion, on the day and in the year stated above.

" Joannes Brunelli, Secretary."

A copy of the original was given to Father Mazzuchelli by
Father Maria Spada, Master of Theology, and Socius of the
Master General of the Order of Preachers.

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 59

To render the Missionary's position doubly secure, and his
union with the Order clearly apparent, through the authority
manifested in his regard by his superiors in Rome, the Master
General sent him, soon after his purchase of the Mound prop-
erty, the following document:

" From Father Angelo Dominico Ancarani, humble Master
General of the Order of Preachers.

** The worthy religious of our Order, Rev. Father Samuel
Mazzuchelli, for many years consecrated to the propagation of
our most holy Catholic Faith in the United States of North
America, announcing the truths of the Gospel to the savages
of that land and bathing their souls in the holy water of
Baptism, having the necessary faculties from the Holy See, has
returned to his work as Apostolic Minister with the idea of
founding a new missionary establishment dedicated to the
conversion of non-Catholics and of pagan savages, also to the
instruction of Catholics and the administration of the Sacra-
ments to the faithful living in that part of the country.

" On this account we recommend him to the kindness of
the Faithful that they may help him in every way suggested
by their zeal for the Catholic Faith and their love for their
neighbor.

" Given at our convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in
Rome, loth of January, 1844.

(Signed '' Father Angelo Ancarani,

'* Master General of the Order of Preachers.
" Father Maria Spada,

" Master of Theology^ and Socius,"

Finding that Galena was not a suitable place for his new
foundation Father Mazzuchelli applied to Rome for permission
to establish it at Sinsinawa. As usual, the Master General
made the petition in his behalf.

6o GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

PETITION

" Most Boly Father:

" Father Samuel Mazzuchelli of the Order of Preachers,
Missionary in the United States of America, Commissary Pro-
vincial of the New Province of St. Charles, of the Western
States of the Union, received faculties, in 1843, to establish a
Novitiate House of his Order in the city of Galena, state of
Illinois. Not finding it convenient to establish this house in
Galena, he humbly supplicates your Holiness to accord him
the faculty to transfer said Novitiate to the Diocese of Mil-
waukee, in the Territory of Wisconsin, or to other parts of
Western America.

" He hopes to obtain this favor for the good of the Church
and the spread of the Faith."

RESPONSE

" Having had an audience, on July 6, 1845, with our Holy
Father Gregory XVI., by Divine Providence Pope, the above
petition was referred to the Secretary of the Holy Congrega-
tion of the Propagation of the Faith. Having been duly con-
sidered, the above petition is graciously granted. Against it
no one whatever may offer opposition.

" Given at Rome from the Office of the Sacred Congrega-
tion, day and year, as above.

" Joannes, Archb. of Thessalonica, Secretary."

Winter — Sinsinawa Park

CHAPTER IV

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF FATHER MAZZUCHEL-

LFS COMMUNITY OF DOMINICAN SISTERS

AT SINSINAWA, WISCONSIN

When Rt. Rev. John Martin Henni was consecrated Bishop
of Milwaukee, March 19, 1844, there were no Sisters in the
Territory of Wisconsin. Miss Mary McNulty, a native of
Baltimore, a woman of great ability and determined will, was
engaged in works of charity in Cincinnati, when Bishop Henni,
whose home was in that city, departed for his diocese in Wis-
consin. It occurred to her that her services, as nurse or teacher,
might be acceptable in Milwaukee, where she supposed there
were no Sisters. She arrived there to find the religious of Notre
Dame recently installed and already at work in the field of
charity and education. There remained for her no choice but
to seek employment elsewhere.

She secured a country school two miles from East Dubuque,
and occasionally attended the Sunday services at Sinsinawa,
thus she met Father Mazzuchelli, who arranged with her, in
the summer of 1847, to take charge of a parish school in
the basement of the little frame church in New Diggings,
Wisconsin, a small mining town, about twelve miles southeast
of Sinsinawa. In that same year. Miss Mary Routan, of St.
Louis, was engaged to take the day school at Sinsinawa.

In the mean time, Father Mazzuchelli had been awaiting
the appearance of those who should be found qualified to
initiate the fulfillment of his religious and educational designs.
The year did not close before two noble, generous souls, emi-
nently fitted for the work, presented themselves at the door of
the small, unoccupied Dominican Convent at Sinsinawa.

On December 26, 1847, Miss Mary Fitzpatrick and Miss
Margaret Conway were admitted as novices, taking, as their

62 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

names in religion, Sister Mary Ignatia and Sister Mary Clara.
Thus began the work and the history of the Dominican com-
munity, transferred in 1852 to Benton, Wisconsin, and having
its Mother House, since 1867, at Sinsinawa, Wisconsin.

In January, 1848, Sister Clara took charge of the school
in New Diggings, and Miss McNulty assisted her until March.
Then, in company with a postulant, she opened a parish school
in ShuUsburg, Wisconsin. Sister Ignatia had remained at the
Mound and had been assisted by Miss Routan. In New
Diggings, while Miss McNulty was with her. Sister Clara
occupied a house of three rooms, one of which was used for
the school, but, from March until July, she boarded with a
private family and taught in the church, a portion of which
was curtained off during school hours.

Most happy were the two Sisters, that spring, to welcome
a new member, Miss Judith Cahill, who, in the sixteenth year
of her age, was received as a novice by Father Mazzuchelli,
in St. Matthew's Church, ShuUsburg, Wisconsin, on April 2,
1848, taking Sister Mary Josephine for her religious name.
Assisted by Miss McNulty, she taught the school in that place
until July.

In August, 1848, the little community of novices. Sisters
Clara, Ignatia and Josephine, with their assistants. Misses
McNulty, Routan and McKenna, assembled at Sinsinawa for
their first retreat and their brief vacation. Miss Elizabeth
Divney, who had been with them a short time, returned to her
home. In September, Sister Clara and Miss Routan went to
New Diggings. The others remained at the Mound, some
teaching the day school, others attending to the household
duties of the college. The Sisters, and their assistants, did the
cooking, washing and sewing, for the students and professors,
in a dwelling entirely distinct from the college, and, in another
house still further away, had their community room and dormi-
tory. They were joined, on December 26th of that year, by
Miss Ellen Conway, who took for her religious name Sister
Mary Rachel. About this time Miss Routan sought employ-
ment elsewhere, and Miss McNulty began to grow tired of life

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A Fairy Palace— Sinsinawa

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 63

in the West, but continued to teach the school in New Diggings
until the fall term of the following year. Then she departed
for the South and entered an Ursuline convent, where she died
a few years later. When Sister Rachel was ready for duty,
Miss Mary McKenna, a young girl sixteen years of age who
had volunteered to help Sister Ignatia, returned to her home,
her services being no longer needed.

His secular teachers having all withdrawn, Father Mazzu-
chelli organized his little community of four novices, appoint-
ing, on February 5, 1849, Sister M. Clara prioress and Sister
M. Josephine sub-prioress of the Convent of St. Dominic,
Sinsinawa Mound, Diocese of Milwaukee. In May of that
year. Sister Clara and Sister Josephine opened a school in a
large rented building, near the center of the village of Hazel
Green, Wisconsin. The neighborhood was almost entirely
Protestant, so the Sisters were objects of an unbounded
curiosity; for instance, their nearest neighbor was a Camp-
bellite preacher, who never failed to examine the Sisters'
provisions whenever the wagon arrived with them from the
Mound.

The school in Hazel Green was well attended and many of
the pupils were the children of Protestant parents. Catechism
was taught to the Catholic pupils daily after school hours, and
the Litany of Loretto was recited before dismissal. Some
young men walked four or five miles every day that they might
receive religious instruction and be prepared for the reception
of the sacraments. While the two devoted young novices,
Sister Clara and Sister Josephine, were enduring loneliness
and deprivation in Hazel Green, the other two. Sister Ignatia
and Sister Rachel, with less loneliness but equal privation, were
laboring constantly at the Mound, assisted by two or three girls.

We find it written, in the records kept by Father Mazzu-
chelli that the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic were
established in the Diocese of Milwaukee in 1846, with the
authority of the Most Rev. Father Thomas Ancarani, Master
General of the Dominican Order residing at Rome.

During the first year of the community's existence there

64 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

were only postulants to teach the schools and attend to other
duties; in the latter part of 1847 some of these were received
as novices. On August 15, 1849, four of the novices were
permitted to make their religious profession. That date will
be forever memorable as the real birthday of St. Clara's Com-
munity. Sisters Clara Conway, Ignatia Fitzpatrick, Josephine
Cahill, and Rachel Conway were its first professed members.
The ceremony took place in Father Mazzuchelli's presence and
with due solemnity, in St. Dominic's Church, a small frame
structure at Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. The beloved Founder was
wont in after years to refer to these Sisters as the four corner-
stones of the institute. It may be interesting to the reader
to learn at once what became of these dear Sisters, though
their names will occur frequently in the following chapters.

Sister Clara died at Benton on January 17, 1864, in the
thirty-ninth year of her age, and the fifteenth of her religious
profession. Sister Ignatia and Sister Josephine both died at
Sinsinawa, the formier on May 14, 1886, in the seventieth year
of her age and the thirty-seventh of her religious profession;
the latter on February i, 1903, in the seventieth year of her
age and the fifty-third of her religious profession.

Sister Rachel was transferred in August, 1866, by her
own wish, from St. Clara Convent, Benton, Wisconsin, to
St. Catherine's Convent, Diocese of Louisville, Kentucky, and
is now a member of the Dominican Community at Springfield,
Illinois.

Biographical sketches with a portrayal of the character of
each Sister mentioned throughout this work will be found in
" The Annals of the Dominican Community of St. Clara's
Convent, Sinsinawa, Wisconsin." Suffice it for this book to
state that these four Sisters were of the mold and fashion of
all valiant women of pioneer days, with that additional some-
thing, precious above price, that always distinguishes the true
religious.

CHAPTER V

ORIGIN OF THE CONVENT IN BENTON,
WISCONSIN

The superintendence of a college and a farm, in addition
to the arduous duties of a missionary, and the journeys and
labors of a preacher, whose talent was in almost constant
demand, was too much for the strength of even so indefatigable
a worker as Father Mazzuchelli. Moreover, he was responsible
for the welfare of the young community of Sisters. Their
numbers and their needs would be steadily increasing. For a
long time to come they must, in their helplessness and inexpe-
rience, depend upon him for support and guidance. The
advancement of their educational work, the increase of their
boarding school, the additional day schools they would open,
all this would constantly multiply his cares and ever increase
the burden of his serious responsibilities.

To so many calls, equally musical to his ear, he could not
respond ; he was forced to listen to some and to be deaf to
others. Had it been within the bounds of human strength, he
would have continued gladly to devote himself to all these noble
works, so satisfying to his zeal, so well within the scope of his
great intellectual powers ; but since this might not be, he was
called upon by his conscience to make his difficult choice. No
soul, itself noble and true, can fail to comprehend how stern
must have been the struggle to know God's will, how severe
the strain in following it when known. Here was a man of
great mental gifts and high moral qualities, a man bearing
honorable titles and possessing unique spiritual powers, con-
ferred upon him by the highest authority in the Church ; this
man, with the approval of the Holy Father and of the Master
General of the Order, had formed a noble project far in advance
of his time. It must have required the supreme effort of a

66 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

truly sanctified will to abandon that project, to transfer to
another the presidency of his college, and to give to others the
control and disposal of his Missionary House, founded to fill a
unique place in the sacred scheme of conversion and salvation.

With characteristic humility, he never spoke of this trial in
after years, but those who loved and revered him saw that
this renunciation was part of that stern though loving discipline
whereby God molds a chosen soul to sanctity. The more closely
we consider the man and the circumstances the more deeply
are we impressed by this crisis in his affairs, and the greater
is our certainty that the performance of this act of renuncia-
tion was superlatively difficult. It was done, however, with
his characteristic promptness and generosity. The Dominican
Fathers of St. Rose's Convent in Kentucky were cordially and
earnestly invited to take possession of the college, and all the
lands and buildings pertaining to it.

We give below an account of this transaction as we find
it recorded in Father Mazzuchelli's writing. It is copied
verbatim :

TRANSFER OF THE SINSINAWA PROPERTY TO THE DOMINICAN
FATHERS OF ST. ROSE CONVENT, KENTUCKY,

ST. Joseph's province.

" In the Name of the. Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Ghost.

** Not necessitated by any conscientious motive, or by the
command or desire of any superior in the order, much less by
any pecuniary need, or by any difficulty whatever before God,
or in the face of the w^orld, not even persuaded that such a
step is really needed to complete the work which, in the name
of the Lord, I began four years ago, I make this renunciation.
This establishment at Sinsinawa Mound, with all its natural
advantages, is just emerging from obscurity and taking deep
root in the Church of Christ. The land is increasing in value
and begins to yield its produce. The discovery of mineral in
the vicinity seems to brighten the prospect and to promise

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 67

plenty of means. And yet, just when the great difficulties and
most bitter trials of a new establishment have been successfully
encountered, I, the undersigned. Commissary Provincial of the
Province of St. Charles, of the Order of St. Dominic, in the
hope of contributing more abundantly to the propagation of
the Catholic faith, in the Diocese of Wisconsin, in order to
avoid any attachment to earth, and to be at liberty to exercise
the sacred ministry as a missionary, do hereby resign the
powers given to me by the Master General of the Order, in
the year 1844, in the city of Rome, renouncing also all the
honors and worldly advantages which ere long could be gained
by persevering in this good undertaking, do give to the Province
of St. Joseph, of the Order of St. Dominic, all my right, title or
claim to seven hundred and twenty acres of valuable land,
including Sinsinawa Mound, with the church, college, houses,
barns, fences, etc., etc., free of all debt and liability whatever,
provided the said Province shall comply with the following
conditions : — " Here follows a request in regard to the dis-
posal or purchase of certain church, house and farm furnish-
ings, also a petition concerning the welfare of certain persons
heretofore dependent on Father Mazzuchelli's care.

The value of the stock, of the farm implements and pro-
duce, of the church ornaments and vestments, and of the house
furnishings, at the lowest estimate, was nineteen hundred and
fifty-five dollars. The accounts of the Sinsinawa House, bal-
anced to the date, October i, 1849, showed a debt of eighteen
hundred dollars, and a sum sufficient to cancel this was all that
Father Mazzuchelli would accept from the Fathers for the
above items. As he himself wrote in his statement regarding
the presentation of Sinsinawa to the Fathers at St. Rose's:
" I make a deduction of one hundred and fifty-five dollars
because the sum nineteen hundred and fifty-five dollars is
not needed to meet my liabilities."

The Fathers having hastened to accept his munificent gift,
he made an assignment to them, in November, 1849, o^ the
whole property of Sinsinawa, asking, as we see from the above
document, no return for the sums expended by him on the

68 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

original purchase and on subsequent improvements. Hence-
forth he would devote himself to the duties of missionary,
preacher, and parish priest. His remarkable acquirements as
a scholar and his eminent gifts as a teacher, though he did
not foresee it then, were to be dedicated under God to the
spiritual elevation and the intellectual advancement of woman.
He was to assist for that end in the education of young girls,
in the formation of their characters, in the development of their
intellectual and spiritual powers, and in the Christian train-
ing of their dispositions to habits of nobility and truth.

The fate of St. Clara's Community had trembled in the
balance. Its very existence, though he did not realize it at the
time, had depended upon his decision in his hour of perplexing
doubt. Without his special attention and constant care in its
early years the institute must have perished. We call him a
hero wjio endangers his own life to save that of another, and
the person saved is ever afterwards the bondman of gratitude.
Is not the man who gives up his noblest work to another for its
accomplishment, and devotes himself to a more humble mission,
because of its absolute need of him — is not he also a hero ?
And shall not they for whom he sacrificed his dearest aims —
they, children of the people he served and children of the many
to whom he preached — they, the members, to the hundredth
generation, of the community he founded — shall they not hold
his name forever in grateful, reverent, loving memory? St.
Clara's answer may be read in the loving conformity of her
religious life to his spirit, and in the constant progress of her
educational work towards his ideals.

After transferring the Sinsinawa property to the Dominican
Fathers, Father Mazzuchelli went at once to his parish in
Benton, La Fayette County, Wisconsin, beginning, without
delay to serve the people, and, as it happened in the Providence
of God, to prepare a permanent home for his little community
of religious women. In the mean time, Sister Ignatia and
Sister Rachel continued their work at Sinsinawa. The school
in New Diggings, which had been closed since the departure
of Miss McNulty, except during the winter of 1849, when it

St. Patrick's Church. Erected by Fr Mazzuchelli in 1S52, Bentox, Wis.

Interior of St. Patrick's Church. As It Appeared in Fr. Samuel's Time, Except the Frescoing

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 69

had been taught by Father Mazzuchelli himself, was reopened
jn 1850, by Sister Clara and Sister Josephine. A comfortable
little cottage of four rooms, located quite near the church,
had been purchased, and there the two devoted companions
dwelt, occupying themselves in teaching the school, in visiting
the sick and the dying, and in fulfilling their own simple
domestic duties. '

Neither in Benton, nor in New Diggings, was there a
residence for the priest. When arriving from Sinsinawa to
minister to the people in either place Father Mazzuchelli had
been accustomed to occupy a small vestry room in the church
and to take his meals at some parishioner's hospitable table
He at once set about building in Benton a parish residence,
a small, two-story, frame house beside the old frame church.
He also began the erection of a new church of stone The
old one was moved across the street, onto a piece of property
exceedingly desolate and neglected, which was transformed
some time later, by the Father's care, into a convent garden
beautiful and fruitful, the happy playground of many a joyous
school-girl.

In the midst of all this activity, his priestly strength of soul
and his natural courage were called upon to meet a new
danger, in the awful exigencies of cholera, which broke out in
New Diggings, in 1850. He was engaged, night and day,
attending the physical, as well as the spiritual needs of his
afflicted people, and it is worthy of note that none of them died
without the sacraments. What untiring devotion, what sleep-
less energy, what unwearied zeal, that implies can be under-
stood by those only who recall the speedy inroads of the
dread disease, and the suddenness with which death followed
its appearance in those days.

In May, 1852, the Sisters resigned their schools at Sin-
sinawa and New Diggings that they might assemble in Benton
for community life. They occupied a large frame house which,
for several months, was almost entirely unfurnished Their
privations were many, and some of them severe, but not beyond
their power of cheerful endurance. Moreover, their observance

70 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

of Holy Poverty put both Priest and Sisters in closer sympathy
with the people, most of them poor miners, struggling for the
merest necessaries of existence. It is true that in one sense,
for the Sisters, as well as for the miners and their families,
it was a poverty of necessity ; but it was elevated and sanctified
by the spirit in which it was borne. It was voluntary poverty
in the highest sense, since the Sisters all had comfortable homes
to which they were free to return. No thought of earthly
comfort, however, could win them from their chosen work of
love. God's glory and their neighbor's salvation constituted
their only solicitude, and with joy did they build their religious
institute on that most stable of foundations, Holy Poverty.

A] free school for day pupils was opened in a large frame
house, for which Father Mazzuchelli paid eight dollars per
month rent. All the children within a circuit of three miles,
their ages varying from five to twenty years, flocked to the
school. It was really the public school of the town, and the
Sisters received public money as their recompense.

In Shullsburg, New Diggings, and Hazel Green, the
spiritual privations had been almost as great as the physical,
and religious privileges had been few and far between. The
Sisters had heard Mass and received Holy Communion on
Sundays only, and as the service was always at half-past ten,
they did not break their fast on those occasions until noon. The
Blessed Sacrament was not reserved in the churches, because
there was no resident priest, and this made the life of the
religious exceedingly lonely. In Benton, though as poor as
ever in things temporal, they found themselves vastly richer
in things spiritual, having week-day Mass, their daily visits to
the Blessed Sacrament, and every second Sunday an early
service.

When the new church was completed, and the old one no
longer needed for services, the latter was remodeled to serve
as an academy. It was blessed under the title of St. Clara,
a favorite patron of the Mazzuchelli family. Late in the fall
of 1853, the Sisters took possession of this establishment, their

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 71

first permanent home, and thus began the existence and the
history of St. Clara's Academy, now St. Clara College.

In the light of its subsequent removal from Sinsinawa to
Benton, and from Benton to Sinsinawa, it is interesting to
note that it was first incorporated as the " Sinsinawa Female
Academy." The act is signed by N. E. Whiteside, Speaker of
the Assembly, and by John E. Holmes, Lieutenant Governor
of the State of Wisconsin and President of the Senate. Ap-
proved, August 18, 1848, by Nelson Dewy, first State Governor
of Wisconsin.

Transplanted to Benton, " Sinsinawa Female Academy "
had become St. Clara Female Academy, as large gilt letters
on the cornice of the pillared porch testified, and it was evident
to its revered Founder that he, under God, must be the mainstay
and support of its infant weakness, the constant guide and
counselor of its inexperienced Faculty. Above all, he was
deeply concerned regarding the religious life of the little com-
munity, and desirous to lessen its manual labors, that there
might be more time for prayer and study, more physical
strength and greater intellectual ability for the training and
proper development, material and spiritual, of the children
committed to their care.

In this connection he and the Sisters considered the advis-
ability of their continuing to lay aside for a time, with the
permission of Rome, the white habit of the Dominican Order.
They wished to substitute for it a habit of black material, to be
worn with head and neck linens of white, thus preserving the
traditional Dominican colors. In accordance with this idea,
an exceedingly neat and convenient costume was devised, and
a description of it was sent to the Master General residing in
Rome. To him Father Mazzuchelli represented the difficulty
of obtaining, in the Northwestern states, the proper material
for white habits, without greater expense than the poverty of
the little community could bear, also the great labor it would
cause the little band, already overburdened, were they to wear
a habit so easily soiled.

72 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

These representations were graciously received, and, hav-
ing due regard to time and place, the change in the garb was
temporarily approved. Nor was this adoption of the black
habit by the American Sisters an innovation in the Order. It
had happened more than once in France that, because of revo-
lutionary disturbances and the danger to Sisters appearing in
so conspicuous a dress as that of the Dominicans, the white
habit was exchanged for a time for one of black. In Italy, also,
there were communities of the Third Order wearing the black
habit at that very time.

In Father Mazzuchelli's " Commentaries on the Rule of the
Third Order " we read : '' It is certain that the form and quality
of the dress of the Sisters of the Order, in the course of the
six hundred years of its existence, underwent several changes ;
the colors, however, have always teen the same. In our days
the habit of this Order in various parts of Europe is almost
entirely black." " However, to avoid all arbitrary doing, the
Most Reverend Master General of the Order, A. V. Jandel,
residing in Rome, was consulted on the subject and replied,
* As said habit, though consisting of a black tunic (or dress),
has a white scapular under it, I have nothing to object to it.' "

While wearing the black habit, the sign of profession for the
Dominican Sisters of the Diocese of Milwaukee, State of Wis-
consin, was a silver cross suspended from a black silk cord
worn around the neck; the cross rested on the breast, just
below the edge of the deep, stiff, white linen collar. This cross
was given by their founder " as a mark of their love of the
Redeemer, and the purity of that faith in defense of which they
were first established."

In the mean time Father Mazzuchelli had applied to St.
Mary's, a Dominican Convent in Somerset, Ohio, now known
as St. Mary's of the Springs, for four Sisters who should be
willing to become affiliated with the community in Benton.
Four came, robed in white. This beautiful habit, so dear to
them, they must lay aside for one of black; many beautiful
religious customs, especially dear to them, they might not hope
to practice here for a number of years. Privations, physical

First Academy, 1853, Benton, Wis.

..J

llUA^

-12

The Grape Arbor on the Benton Grounds

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 73

and spiritual, to which they were strangers, must be endured
for a long time to come. Wisconsin was at that time a wilder-
ness, compared with Ohio. They feared, doubted and dreaded ;
they spent their first night at St. Clara in earnest discussion
with their hostesses, whose religious family they had intended
to join, and three of them concluded to return to Ohio. The
one who remained was Sister Joanna Clark, the " Mother
Joanna " of loving, grateful memory.

Sister Clara, prioress of the little community since 1849,
determined, in her humility, to resign her office, urging the
Sisters to choose for the place Sister Joanna, whose experi-
ence of a regular conventual life, as well as her knowledge
of Dominican customs and traditions, so well fitted her to
train, to instruct, and ,to govern the little band of devoted
souls, so zealous in all things good, and so anxious to be thor-
oughly Dominican in spirit, though they might not hope to
be such in the letter for many years to come. And so we find
in the Book of Records, in Father Mazzuchelli's writing, the
following entry: *' On the 15th of August, 1854, Sister M.
Joanna Clark was made prioress and Sister M. Clara Conway
sub-prioress of St. Clara Convent, Benton, Wisconsin."

Mother Joanna Clark, being re-elected each year on the first
Tuesday after Easter, governed the community with kindly
wisdom and gentle firmness until her death in December, 1864,
and Sister Clara Conway was re-elected sub-prioress every year
until her death in January, 1864.

CHAPTER VI

THE LAST YEARS OF FATHER MAZZUCHELLI'S

LIFE

As pastor of several congregations of the faithful, Father
Mazzuchelli displayed the same indefatigable zeal that had
animated him as missionary and as college president. Having
built churches at Benton, at New Diggings, and at St. Rose
Prairie, his interest in the temporal as well as the spiritual
welfare of the families clustered around them was untiring.
In his " Year Books " everything relating to these parishes is
recorded. One feels a curious interest in reading that the
Christmas collection in Benton, in 1852, amounted to forty-
seven dollars and ninety-five cents ; that there were ten mar-
riages and forty-five baptisms ; that the Christmas Communions
numbered one hundred and twenty-seven in Benton and one
hundred and fifteen in New Diggings. This meant, of course,
that the dear Father had heard, in the two towns, three miles
apart, two hundred and forty-two confessions on the vigil of
the great feast.

Life was very simple in Wisconsin fifty years ago, but
faith and piety were strong in the hearts of the devoted little
bands of Catholics scattered here and there throughout the
state, and blest were those who enjoyed the- care and the sacred
services of the high-souled Dominican. From 1853 to the year
of his death, he divided his time and his solicitude between
his churches and his schools, multiplying his all-embracing
interest that it might extend to every detail of parish, com-
munity and school life.

Neither the school nor the comniiunity increased greatly
during the fifties, for the population, of that part of Wisconsin
in which Benton is located, was at that time small and scat-
tered. However, though the number of pupils and of religious

The Little Mound." The Juniors and Their
Prefect, 1865

The Three Graces and

Father Samuel's Sun Dial

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 75

was small, the standard of excellence reached under Father
Mazzuchelli's training and tuition was high. In an old account
book, containing the academy pupils' bills for the years 1854
to 1858, we find from the titles of the text-books charged to
the account of certain pupils that, even in those early days, an
advanced course of study, including higher , mathematics and
the sciences, was open to those desiring to pursue it. Rhetoric
and literature, natural philosophy and astronomy, are subjects
recorded in a list of the lectures given by Father Mazzuchelli
during those years when the school was yet in its infancy.

The progress thus initiated was continued with an ever
increasing degree of success as the years multiplied. Among
the thirty-two members that constituted the community dur-
ing the venerable Founder's lifetime, he discovered gifts and
talents that, under his fostering care and skillful training,
developed rapidly and brilliantly, giving to St. Clara Academy
from the very first an admirable corps of efficient teachers.
Special talents, as for music or art, were cultivated by compe-
tent persons, and Father Mazzuchelli himself, having a com-
plete cabinet of instruments for illustration and experiment,
gave the Sisters a normal course in higher mathematics and
in the natural sciences. He also taught them Latin, French,
and Italian.

During the winter of each year, from the foundation of
the academy to the time of his death, on three evenings of the
week, he gave to the pupils, in presence of the teachers, lectures
on science, history and Christian doctrine. On Sunday after-
noons he conducted the Bible history class, making the lesson
the basis of those clear, practical instructions that were so
effective in awakening faith and animating charity.

Under his supervision, the daily recitations were a pleasure
rather than a task ; to the teachers, he was ever a support and a
help ; to the pupils, an inspiration and a trusted guide. During
recreation hours it was the delight of the pupils to meet him,
to catch his sunny smile, and to engage him in conversation.
His words were so pleasant, even gay at times, yet so full of
valuable information and profitable instruction. He had the

76 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

gift of interesting young minds in serious subjects, of awaken-
ing in them a desire to know that which they ordinarily
regarded as dull and profitless. Better than this he had the
power to urge them, with gracious persistence, to follow an
honorable course of conduct naturally distasteful to them.
And how they all loved him! Because his charity and his
unselfish kindness made him lovable. Yet he could practice
severity, if need be, though he tempered it with such sweetness
that the thought of having displeased or disappointed him
could not be comfortably entertained, and the culprit was soon
at his side, seeking the pardon that was always instantly and
graciously given.

With all his earnestness about the pupils' intellectual pro-
gress, and his zeal regarding their spiritual advancement, he
was so fatherly, so human in his consideration for their youthful
love of good things and good times, that he was ever devising
something to recreate and to amuse them. The innocent games
of recess time received the encouragement of his hearty
laughter. Sleigh rides in winter and wagon rides in summer,
with a big dinner somewhere on the way, it was his delight to
arrange. Dramas, concerts and candy-pulls for winter eve-
nings, and picnic suppers on the grass, at the summer sunset
hour, were the happy outcome of his unfailing thoughtfulness.

Little wonder that the school, because of the thoroughness
of its methods, gained favor with the parents, and, because of
its pleasantness, attracted the children, so that, in i860, there
was not room in the small frame convent for all the pupils
w,ho applied for admission. Then Father Mazzuchelli planned,
with his admirable skill as an architect, a convent after the
European style, with cloisters, bordering on a quadrangular
court in the midst of the structure. Several small wooden
houses that had been used for domestic purposes were removed
from the rear of the old convent, and three sides of the quad-
rangular court were walled in by three parts of the great stone
building, so skillfully designed by the Reverend Founder, but
so sadly destined never to be completed.

Everything had been prospering; material advancement

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 77

had been steady; educational progress had been rapid;
spiritual advantages had been many and fruitful; and then
came 1864, a year of such pain and sorrow, darkness and loss,
that the survival of the community seems almost miraculous.

In January, Sister Clara Conway, the beloved of the people,
the model of the Sisters, the mainstay of the school, the
cherished friend of the pupils, the right hand of her superior
and of her director, sickened, and in a few days died. God's
hand was upon the devoted household, but they knew not yet
how heavily it could press, nor how much they would yet learn
to bear. Her office as sub-prioress was filled by Sister Agnes
Barry. In the old Book of Records we read : '* On the 17th
day of January, 1864, departed this life. Sister M. Clara, called
in the world Miss Margaret Conway, aged thirty-nine years."
Signed —" Samuel MazzuchelH, O.P."

It was his last entry in the old book that we treasure, for
that day month he himself was stricken with his last illness.
On the evening of February 16, he was engaged in the discus-
sion of business at some house in the town ; a messenger found
him there, and urged him to hasten to the bedside of a dying
parishioner. Though the weather had turned colder and a
heavy snow was falling, he did not delay to return to his
house for his wraps, but accompanied the messenger with all
possible speed to the afflicted home, three miles distant. Re-
turning several hours later, he was stricken with a chill, which
was succeeded by violent fever. When the physician arrived, he
found that pleuro-pneumonia had developed and that the case
was serious. The Sisters, by devoted nursing, and the physi-
cian, by constant attention, fought for the life that was dear to
hundreds of persons and priceless to the community. Heaven
was besieged with prayers. It could not be that God meant to
deprive them of the father who had been to them in all things
so tender and loving. He had provided for their physical needs
and their spiritual requirements so long and so faithfully;
they knew not a temporal care or anxiety, save the teaching
of their classes ; nor a spiritual trouble but the saying of their
prayers and the making of their meditation without distraction.

78 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

He knew from the first how his illness would terminate, and
made sure, before strength failed him, to say his last wise,
tender words to his heart-broken children. For a week the
uncertain struggle went on with alternating hopes and fears,
and then came the end. On the morning of February 23, a
little before four, his physical discomfort seemed merged and
lost in the joy of his soul; his face became radiant, and crying
out " O quam dilecta tabernacula tua, Domine ! " he departed
for the eternal home he thus apostrophized.

To know what that awful moment meant to the Sisters is
not possible to any one, not of their number at the time. Life
itself seemed to lie in ruins about them, and they were too
stunned at first to realize the awful act of resignation that
awaited their tearful utterance.

For a week the deceased Father lay in state in St. Patrick's
Church, Benton, Wisconsin, and those who revered and loved
him came from far and near to look upon his face, so noble
and calm in holy death. Not one but had lost in him something
that no other could give, in quite the same way or in the same
measure.

A week of silent rest in the church that he had built, a week
of intense grief and fervent prayer for his surviving religious
children and his multitude of friends, a week of many suffrages
for his soul, and then came Tuesday, March 2d, the dread
burial day, when, with all the holy pomp and stately ceremonial
of Mother Church, his obsequies were celebrated and his vener-
ated remains were carried in their leaden casket only a few
steps from his house and church to the village graveyard. A
simple marble monument marks the spot, in the midst of the
lot reserved for the Sisters, where the beloved pastor sleeps.
There he, and they who were claimed by God while the convent
was in Benton, rest in holy companionship, awaiting the hour
of a glorious resurrection.

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Where Happy Moments were Spent with Father Samuel as Chairman

Nr^/y'i-^

'Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit hour and shadowy way,
Of birds and flowers and dewy leaves,

And smiles and tones more dear than they!'

CHAPTER VII
A CHARACTER SKETCH

REVEREND SAMUEL CHARLES MAZZUCHELLI

A man's life may teem with important opportunities, every
one of which he may use to its utmost value, making his days
exceedingly rich and full, and yet there may be an absence of
all extraordinary incident.

A few pages have sufficed for the record of Father Mazzu-
chelli's years in Benton, for, compared with those that preceded
them, they were quiet and uneventful. They were pre-emi-
nently the years of his interior life. They had been inaugurated
by the self-immolation of 1849, ^^^ by the subsequent voluntary
renunciation of every ecclesiastical ambition, however lawful or
laudable. They were continued in a spirit of detachment from
all exterior things, however sacred, and of an utter self-forget-
fulness that stamped his exterior life with the seal of sanctity
and made his interior life an unbroken union with God. Such
a union makes the priest but the more constantly and tenderly
mindful of his neighbor, for Divine love quickens zeal and
inflames charity.

It was in keeping with the energy of his will and the
singleness of his intentions that Father Mazzuchelli's form
should be daily seen outlined against the sky, as he stood on
the rising walls of the new convent, not only directing but
assisting the masons and carpenters. It was in still closer
keeping, however, with the sacred efficiency of his daily life,
that he should be sumrrjoned from those walls to his modest
parlor, in his little cottage across the street, to encourage some
repentant or, mayhap, to reprove some rebellious sinner; to
repress some exuberant society woman, who had come from
a distance to lay before him her artificial perplexities ; to
sympathize in some young man's trials and temptations, or

8o GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

to reprove some young woman's giddiness and neglect of grace ;
to aid, with his wise counsel, some harassed man of business,
or to comfort and advise some troubled wife and mother; to
satisfy, in fact, a thousand and one demands upon his time, his
charity, his wisdom.

Such things fill the life of every priest, it is true, but not
in the same measure, for not every priest has the heaven-born
faculty " to be all things to all men." Father Mazzuchelli
possessed it in an eminent degree, so that not only all classes
of persons, but persons of all creeds flocked to him in their
hours of darkness, perplexity and trial.

There was a charming social side to his character which
had a strong attraction for his superiors and his equals, so
that it was no rare thing for him to receive a visit of courtesy
from some Church dignitary or a call of ceremony from some
state official, to be consulted by some man of affairs, or
appealed to by some political personage. Many came to seek
him for the mere pleasure of conversing with him. To these
he was gentle and affable, but he tactfully hastened them on
their way, that he might return to the particular work he had
in hand at the moment. And he had so much to do : his parish
work, his distant sick calls, his mission work ; the preparation
of his lectures for the school, of his learned discourses for
delivery in distant cities, of his effective sermons for his own
people, and for other congregations, where his services as an
eloquent preacher were ever in demand. Besides all this, there
were his timely visits to many a home, where his presence,
as a gracious, helpful friend, was ever welcome. He seemed
to have time, however, to respond efficiently to every demand
upon the exhaustless resources of his mind and heart, for
while quick to think, to decide, and to move, he was singularly
methodical. All his habits were orderly; in his house, in the
schools, in his church, everything was in place. Thus he saved
friction as well as time, and while no detail was too small for
his careful consideration, no task was too great for his instant
readiness.

Not only did he economize his own time, he saved the time

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 8i

of others by his promptness, and his neighbor never suffered
annoyance or inconvenience by his faihng to keep an appoint-
ment. A bHzzard might blow, or a thunderstorm rage, it never
hindered Father MazzuchelU's appearance at the appointed
hour. Business men were known to ask " Did Father Mazzu-
cheUi say that he would be here at such an hour ? " and then
to assert, " Well, then he will be here ; nothing short of a
hurricane will delay him."

Never in unseemly haste, yet never a moment late ; never
idle, yet never too busy to listen to the words of even the
poorest, the simplest child; quick in manner and animated in
speech, yet never impatient or ill-tempered ; he was a living
example, in practice, of the things he most frequently preached.

Always abstemious, his habits during Lent were austere.
It was his daily custom to go until noon without even a cup
of coffee, and the Sisters were often distressed to learn, on his
return, at two or three o'clock in the afternoon, from a distant
sick call, that he had not yet broken his fast. On Shrove Tues-
day evening, he would warn the Sister who had care of his
table *' This is the last supper till Easter Sunday," and so it
would prove to be. Indeed, one cannot fail to notice, when
reading his Memoirs, how seldom he mentions food, though
his deprivations, when making his long journeys, through deso-
late tracts of country, must have been frequent and severe.

The spirit of mortification animated him at all times, and
many beautiful instances of his rigid practice of penance
became known after his death, but these are sacred things that
we may not mention ; another generation may know, and will
reveal them to his honor and God's glory.

His humility, in the light of his remarkable gifts of mind
and qualities of soul; was profound. In his Memoirs he refers,
with the utmost simplicity and candor, to the respect shown
him, the honors conferred upon him, and yet, in the whole
volume, there is not one note of egotism. That he had per-
sistently refused the Episcopal dignity was not known to even
his nearest friends until the fact was established by letters
discovered after his death. Letters that he had not destroyed

82 GOLDEN BELLS IIST CONVENT TOWERS

because other information that they contained would be of
vital importance to the Sisters, when he should have departed
from their midst. His charity to the poor was unbounded;
many a friendless youth or homeless maiden owed an education
to his generosity, and success in life to his ever solicitous
interest. The people of the various parishes he served, espe-
cially those of Benton and New Diggings, looked upon him
as a sort of special providence appointed by God for their
personal guidance and support, alike in the simple occurrences
and the greater exigencies of their lives, and their first impulse,
in time of trouble, was to turn to him for the help that never
failed them.

In eastern Iowa, northwestern Illinois, and all through
Wisconsin and northwestern Michigan, his memory is still
held dear by the descendants of his former parishioners, peni-
tents and friends. The western hierarchy and priesthood of
his day were his warm friends, while the civil officials of the
time admired and revered him. He was never known to fail
a friend, or to injure an enemy ; moreover, the sterling char-
acter and noble disposition that secured and kept his friend,
was not long in winning the good will and the high regard
of his enemy. His unhesitating obedience and unflinching
fidelity to the authorities of the Church and of the Order were
evinced in every crisis of his life, and are manifest to any
one who reads his correspondence, or glances at the documents
quoted in this work. To have inspired such deep and unhesi-
tating trust in the highest officials of the Church and the Order,
he must have impressed them profoundly with the grandeur of
his character, the greatness of his intellect and the strength of
his virtues. But, though he might be admired and trusted by
the great and powerful, though he might be indeed " all things
to all men," the quality that most endeared him to the poor, the
simple, the sinful and the sorrowful, was his high-minded
sunniness of disposition, his indomitable determination to see
people and things, opportunities and events, in the best possible
light.

During the last decade of the Father's years there was a

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 83

forceful change in life's mechanism, as put together by cir-
cumstances, life's wonderful engineers.

The years of the saintly Priest's missionary labors, amid
the savage and semi-civilized conditions in Michigan and
Wisconsin, had been varied by long journeys that were char-
acterized by ever changing scenery and diversified by unex-
pected occurrences. Though isolated and lonely, as to men
of his own class and kind, his life was public, and certainly
it was not dull.

Later, his position as Vicar of the Diocese of Dubuque had
widened the field of his activity, and kept him constantly mov-
ing from place to place, in the accomplishment of the ceaseless
round of his laborious and responsible duties. This had
brought him in pleasant contact with many classes of people,
and in friendly relations with many an interesting personality,
and more than ever was he before the public. His visit to
Europe had been a renewal of the tender joys of a noble
boyhood, supplemented by the enjoyment of a panorama of
beautiful sacred pictures of palaces, churches and shrines. As
a missionary from a distant land and its strange people, he
was the object of much curious and reverential attention from
the public as well as from his many friends and acquaintances.
On his return to America, his work at Sinsinawa had given a
fresh impetus to his energies, and had filled his life with a
diversity of interesting incident, while bringing him in frequent
intercourse with men remarkable for position, wealth and
intelligence. At no other period of his career could temptation
have more strongly urged him to become that idol of society,
the popular ecclesiastic.

Thus his life, until 1850, had been full of a brisk physical
activity, prompted and sustained by an unwearying mental
alertness. It had glowed with the color of frequent change of
scene, and with the warmth of many friendly associations. It
had called likewise for the steady manifestation of the strong
qualities of a noble soul, and the sturdy virtues of a well
disciplined heart ; the high-minded Dominican had never failed
in making a worthy response.

84 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

We have noted his courage on board the storm-tossed
ship, and in the wigwams of hostile Indians ; we have admired
his fortitude in his cheerful endurance of hunger and cold,
isolation and loneliness ; w'e have been edified by the strong
faith and holy desire that sent him hundreds of miles in the
depth of winter to receive the Sacrament of Penance; and
we have been reproached for our selfishness by beholding his
tender charity in ministering to the physical and spiritual needs
of repulsive savages.

We have rejoiced in the invincible trust and hopefulness
with which he built churches and established schools in poor,
scattered prairie villages, that he foresaw would become cities ;
we have taken holy pride in the gracious tact with which he
drew non-Catholics within the circle of his forceful and benefi-
cent influence; and we have glorified God for the unfailing
simplicity and humility with which this high-souled Priest used
his admirable graces, gifts and powers. We have been most
deeply impressed, however, by his act of renunciation when he
left the grand possibilities of Sinsinawa for the simple cer-
tainties of Benton. Then his life's mechanism became that of
the complicated, many-wheeled, exquisitely balanced, but per-
fectly hidden and wondrously quiet machinery of the watch,
that counts with the gentle motion of reverent hands the beads
of Time's rosary of hours.

In the accomplishment of his later, and apparently easier
work, there was a development of new powers and a mani-
festation of the more delicate virtues of a higher spiritual life,
the hidden life of one who abides constantly w'ith Christ, and
on whom the public has no claim. Many events of the Father's
closing years, events that may not be described to this genera-
tion, prove also that to him had come the dark hours of
Gethsemane and Calvary, as they come to every noble soul
that follows in the footsteps of Christ.

The Divine Master had chosen the devoted Priest for the
martyrdom of the soul, and this had been borne in that holy
silence that strengthens interior patience and sanctifies superla-
tively life's sorrow and pain. His election to the ministry of

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 85

interior suffering was known only as one knows what he reads
between the lines, when simple dignity and saintly reserve have
controlled the pen that inscribed them.

The conditions that he met with in Benton were entirely
new. The care of several struggling parishes, the support of a
young community, and the direction of a large boarding school
afforded occupation for every hour, and exercise for every
faculty, but there was also a new atmosphere that favored the
growth of those interior virtues that, hidden from all but God
and His angels, anoint, perfume and shroud the soul, as it were,
in preparation for its glorious translation from earth to heaven.

Thus it happens that the last chapter of Father Mazzu-
chelli's biography is so brief. It is not easy to touch the inner
life of a great soul with the pen, be it ever so reverently wielded
by the hand of loving remembrance.

Those who have studied the lives of God's holy ones, the
sanctified children of the Church, have discovered the strange
truth that the spirit of heavenly joy is ever the treasured inmate
of a martyred soul. Such joy, the offspring of sanctified sor-
row, flooded the heart and irradiated the face of St. Clara's
beloved Founder, as he died with the words of the psalm upon
his lips, " O quam delecta tabernacula tua, Domine ! "

St. Clara Convent, November 4, 1903, 7 p.m.

CHAPTER VIII

THE BENTON ACADEMY SUBSEQUENT TO THE
DEATH OF FATHER MAZZUCHELLI

That St. Clara's community survived the year 1864 is almost
a miracle of heavenly response to human reliance on Divine
Providence. The situation demanded extraordinary powers,
affording strength to endure much physical discomfort and
unwonted mental distress as well as ability to perform arduous
labors of body and mind. It likewise required in those at the
helm the ability to meet almost overwhelming temporal and
financial difficulties with prudence and wisdom; it also
demanded the courage to persevere in a work that seemed on
the verge of ruin, and to sustain heavy and unfamiliar burdens
of responsibility. The Sisters had been accustomed to rely
with unquestioning confidence on Father Mazzuchelli and on
Mother Joanna, under God, for the supply of every need,
physical, mental, and spiritual. And as teachers they had
always referred to Sister Clara for advice and help. Her
death had been a severe loss to the school and to the com-
munity; that it was so soon followed by the death of Father
Mazzuchelli was an irreparable misfortune for the whole insti-
tute. While his venerated remains were lying in state in the
church. Sister Catherine Myers, an admirable religious and a
successful teacher, rested on a bier in the Convent Chapel. Her
health had been failing for some time, and she died of pul-
monary consumption three days after Father Mazzuchelli.

Their Father, their one true friend and generous provider,
having been taken from them, the Sisters turned with redoubled
love and confidence to Mother Joanna. On the first Tuesday
after Easter the election was held as usual. Mother Joanna was
re-elected Prioress, and Sister Agnes Barry was chosen to fill

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 87

Sister Clara's office as sub-Prioress. Sister Josephine, Sister
Rachel and Sister Regina became Members of the Council.

For some time before Father Mazzuchelli's death Mother
Joanna's health had caused the Sisters serious anxiety. The
sudden increase of her responsibilities did not tend to improve
her condition. Much of the household care fell upon Sister
Agnes, and Sister Josephine superintended as far as she was
able the work on the new building. In the academy there
were Sister Gertrude Power, Sister Rachel Conway, Sister
Veronica Power, Sister Imelda Hertsog, Sister Emily Power,
Sister Vincentia Williams, Sister Regina Mulqueeny and Sister
Alberta Duffy, all excellent teachers, who exerted themselves
with superlative energy to forward the interests of the school.
There were no more beautiful scientific and historical lectures
or impressive religious instructions, such as Father Mazzu-
chelli had given, however, and even the youngest child felt the
loneliness and the sense of vacancy caused by his absence, but
the regular routine of class work progressed happily, and other
things went on smoothly until the winter of 1864. Then sev-
eral of the pupils were stricken with typhoid fever, and, in
spite of tender care and the best medical attendance to be pro-
cured in those days, four of them died. In the midst of this
heart-breaking trouble Mother Joanna's condition grew rapidly
worse. That she might have the quiet that it was not possible
to secure for her in the crowded academy, she had been removed
to Father Mazzuchelli's little reception-room in his unoccupied
cottage. There the Sisters sought her to ask advice, and to
receive encouragement and consolation. There, on December
15th, they knelt to listen to her last loving words, and, after
catching the sound of her last sigh, to realize that they were
indeed orphans, almost as ignorant and helpless as little children
deprived of their parents.

In one year the three props of the community had been
removed, and everything seemed to be tottering helplessly
towards inevitable ruin, but the Hand of God was there; it
pressed heavily, but it supported mightily.

88 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

On Christmas Day Sister Regina Mulqueeny was elected
Prioress, pro tern., and life went on in the shadow of that
awful year, as human life must ever do in the midst of sorrow
and death. There must be no halting, but there are various
ways of progressing. The Sisters chose the way of courage,
of fortitude, of zealous, untiring endeavor. When the Tuesday
after Easter, 1865, arrived, Sister Regina was elected Prioress
and Sister Emily Power, sub-Prioress.

Thus did the latter begin in the community her long years
of service in an official capacity. Father Mazzuchelli himself
had recognized her fitness for such duties, and had foreseen
the Sisters' unwavering trust in her ability to fulfil them, with
honor to the community and glory to God.

Previous to Father Mazzuchelli's death the community had
received thirty-three members. It is interesting to notice that
twenty-three of these were under twenty years, and eight were
under twenty-five years of age. Between the date of the
venerated Founder's death and that of the removal of the
Convent to Sinsinawa, nineteen new members were admitted
to the Novitiate. Of those who received the habit during
Father Mazzuchelli's life, twelve survive, nine in St. Clara's
community, and three in other Dominican communities. Of the
pupils in the school at the time of his death there are seven now
in the community.

During the years 1865 and 1866, the work was continued
on the new building until it was under roof and the study-
hall, recreation-room, refectories, bakeroom and kitchen were
fit for occupation. On the 15th of August, 1865, a banquet was
spread, in the new recreation-room, for the community and
the vacation boarders. This was the first time the building was
used. Two or three months later the school was moved to the
new study-hall, and the whole household began to take their
meals in the new refectories. The old study-hall was trans-
formed into two dormitories, for there were a hundred and
ten pupils that year, and sleeping room was in great demand.

Soon after its establishment in the new building the school
was regraded, the classes above eighth grade were arranged

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 89

under the titles Second Senior, First Senior, Sub-graduate
and Graduate, and Sister Benedicta Kennedy was appointed
Prefect and Directress of the school, a position she held for
seventeen years.

The last months of 1866 were spent by Mother Regina and
Sister Alberta in visiting the mission houses, and in attending
to business connected with the school. In the mean time. Sister
Emily governed the community, and taught several of the
higher classes in the academy. On her return Mother Regina
contracted a severe cold which rapidly developed into pneu-
monia, and again the young community had to face one of those
trials that seem almost unendurable. On April 15th, Monday
in Passion Week, 1867, Mother Regina died, in the twenty-
fifth year of her age and the seventh of her religious profession.
Gifted with more than ordinary intelligence, educated and
accomplished, she had displayed an aptitude for organization
and for business that rendered her services to the community
apparently indispensable, and her loss seemed all but irrep-
arable.

Having heard that the Dominican Fathers were about to
sell the property at Sinsinawa, the Board of Trustees of
" Benton Female Academy," chartered in 1862, had resolved,
on March 22, 1867, to purchase said property. Of this Board
Mother Regina had been President, and in the negotiations for
the purchase of Sinsinawa, she had been the prime mover.

The Sisters, having exhausted their means in continuing
the work on the new building in Benton, had not, comparatively
speaking, a dollar with which to carry out their design of
securing Sinsinawa Mound as the future location of their
academy. Mother Regina had made an appeal to Father
Mazzuchelli's warm friend and admirer, Mr. William Ryan,
then of Galena, Illinois, to lend the Sisters the sum required
for their purpose. To the undying honor of his name among
St. Clara's religious children, be it said, that he acceded to the
Sisters' request, and thus enabled them to begin the work
which now crowns and glorifies '' the Mound."

To have had the support of Mother Regina's bright intelli-

90 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

gence and keen foresight withdrawn, at such a time, was
indeed a most painful trial, but in this, as in the hour of their
former bereavements, they found that the Hand that crushed
likewise blessed, and that again they were to learn the truth of
St. Paul's exclamation, *' I can do all things in Him who
strengthens me."

On the feast of St. Pius, O. P., May 5, 1867, Sister Emily
Power was elected Prioress; Sister Alberta Duffy, sub-
Prioress ; and Sister Josephine Cahill, Sister Gertrude Power,
and Sister Magdalen Madigan were chosen to be members of
the Council. This constituted them, with their Superiors,
members of the Board of Trustees.

Sinsinawa having been purchased, the college building
required remodeling to adapt it to the convenience of a com-
munity of religious women, and of a boarding school for girls.
Many changes were to be made in the interior, and steam
heating, which was then in its infancy, was to be introduced
throughout the building. While, under the superintendence of
Sister Magdalen, the work of preparation and improvement
was going on at Sinsinawa, Mother Emily and Sister Alberta
were engaged, not only in the fulfillment of the duties of their
important offices, but also in teaching, the former in the class-
room, the latter in the department of music.

The last months of the scholastic year fled all too quickly,
and it was with a feeling of sadness that Sisters and pupils
saw commencement day approaching. Many loved ones, who
had been with them three short years before, were gone to
another life, and the time to be spent at the dear old home
in Benton was becoming brief. Indeed, July 18, 1867, com-
mencement day of that year, was really the day of farewell to
" old St. Clara," for the exodus began immediately after it.

The first catalogue issued by St. Clara Academy appeared
that day, and the three who graduated on the occasion were
the first to receive diplomas. Previous to 1867 only a printed
prospectus had been issued each year, and graduates had
received silver medals as a token of their success in having
finished the course.

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CHAPTER IX

ST. CLARA ACADEMY AT SINSINAWA MOUND,

WISCONSIN

The Old Stone Building and its Surroundings. — The
stone building was planned by Father Mazzuchelli, and the
east wing was constructed under his supervision, reaching
completion in 1846. For ten years it sufficed for the accom-
modation of the students and the professors of the Sinsinawa
College for boys, the Brothers occupying a frame house situated
near by.

The Board of Trustees, Rev. T. Jarboe, president; Rev.
A. O. Walker, vice-president : Rev. S. Mazzuchelli, secretary ;
Rev. J. Polking, Rev. T. L. Power, and Rev. Benedict For-
tune, members, at their annual meeting " Resolved, on Sep-
tember 3, 1855, to erect the w'est end of the college building
according to the original plan." On the 7th of September,
1857, the Board of Trustees authorized the president of the
college. Rev. T. Jarboe, to furnish the new part of the build-
ing in accordance with the requirements of an increased number
of students. From this it is evident that the west end of the
rock building was first occupied in the fall of 1857. Another
ten years of excellent educational work and of increasing
prosperity passed, and then there began a distinctively new
chapter in the history of Sinsinawa.

The College had required the services of a number of
Dominican Fathers eminently fitted, not only for the work of
education, but also for the special and distinctive work of the
Order, the giving of Missions. The demand for missionary
laborers was yearly increasing, and the Province of St. Joseph
needed for that work every priest at its command. In accord-
ance, then, with the expressed wish of the Superiors residing
at Rome, the Board of Trustees of Sinsinawa College, Very

92 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

Rev. D. J. Meagher, president, Rev. Jos. Turner, vice-president,
at their eighteenth annual and thirty-third special meeting,
resolved, on February 24, 1866, to offer the property and build-
ings at Sinsinawa for sale. The Board of Trustees of St. Clara
Female Academy, at Benton, Wisconsin, determined to pur-
chase the property, and carried their design into effect on March
31, 1867.

The remodeling of the building, w^hich began at once, was
finished some time in the summer, and in August, the furniture,
with other portable possessions of the community, was moved
from Benton to the Mound. The Sisters hopefully, yet with
sadness and regret, departed from the old home, so dear
because of its sacred memories, and took up their abode in the
new one, not less sacred to memory, since it had been the scene
of Father Mazzuchelli's first educational labors.

Everything being in readiness, the new St. Clara Academy
opened its doors to pupils on the first Monday of September,
1867. Twenty-one years before this date the community had
been founded here at Sinsinawa ; now, after a sojourn of fifteen
years in Benton, it had returned to be re-established at Sin-
sinawa, the spot so dear to Father Mazzuchelli and so inti-
mately associated with his brightest hopes and noblest plans.

The church that he had erected in 1842 and in which he
had so often officiated, was used by the Sisters, in 1867, and
for several succeeding years, as a chapel. There, where Father
Samuel, as he is affectionately called, had chanted the Divine
Office with his brethren, the Sisters chanted the Office of the
Blessed Virgin. Before that altar, on which he had so fre-
quently offered the Holy Sacrifice, they knelt in daily prayer;
and in that sanctuary, where, in his presence, the first four
Sisters had made their religious profession, one hundred and
forty members of the community, in annual groups of ten or
more, received the habit and made their vows.

There being no room in the academy large enough to
accommodate a commencement day audience, the erection of
a hall for the purpose was a necessity; hence the structure
still in use on public occasions was erected in 1868, between

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 93

the church and the academy, about forty feet from the latter.
When preparations were made to build the new convent, in
1899, the hall was moved to its present location, southwest of
the church.

The rock building, in 1867, was three stories in height, with
a dormer half story and a frame observatory consisting of two
low stories, one room in each. The first floor of the building
comprised the parlors, the refectories, the kitchen, the guests'
dining-room, and what was called in those days " the office."
This was for ten years the only place in the house, besides their
dormitory, that the Sisters could claim as their own. It was
a narrow, dark room, having only two small north windows
so high up that one could see from them only the sky and
the top of the Mound, but it was a place of happy hours, of
sweet associations, and of delightful companionship.

The second story comprised the study-hall in the west end,
and in the east end, the recreation-room, the cabinet of school
apparatus, and the Superior's office, affectionately called
" Mother's room." On the third floor, west, were eight music-
rooms, four on each side of the corridor. By means of folding
doors each four could be thrown into one large hall, when
required for musical entertainments. In the southeast corner of
that story were the Minims' school-room and the two harp-
rooms, abodes of beauty and song, of flowers and vines, rooms
very dear to memory. On the other side of the corridor were
the Minims' dormitory and a small class-room. The Seniors'
dormitory occupied the western part and the Juniors' the east-
ern part of the fourth floor. The observatory was used as a
studio during the school session, but in the long vacation, it
was the favorite refuge of Mission Sisters having a particularly
studious, literary, or artistic turn of mind. The view from its
balconies was impressive beyond description, whether one stood
beneath the blue sky of day, or the starry sky of night. This
old land-mark on memory's pleasant ways no longer exists, its
removal having been necessitated by recent improvements.

The front entrance of the old building is still approached by
four broad, limestone steps, with iron balustrades, but in the

94 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

old days, it opened into a wide hall, dividing the house into
east and west parts. The great double front door and the
somewhat less pretentious back door, opposite to it, were both
wide open all day in the summer months, making '' the old
front hall " a most agreeable rendezvous for convent visitors,
as well as for convent inmates, and many are the treasured
memories connected with the after-dinner recreation hour, so
often spent there in joyous intercourse with our Superior and
our Sisters.

The community had the pleasant custom, in the summer
evenings, of gathering in groups on the front steps of the rock
building for conversation, or for singing to the accompaniment
of the guitar. By the Mission Sisters, home in July and
August, those gatherings were ranked among the most delight-
ful relaxations of the long vacation.

Precious also to memory are the meetings that used to take
place on the lawn, outside the east door of the pupils' refectory,
for there the Sisters, as they came from the chapel after
Vespers and Complin, had the pleasant custom of lingering
on the grass, or on the steps, awaiting the sound of the supper
bell, and of engaging meanwhile in joyous recreation.

The terrace in front of the stone building, and the flight
of wooden steps leading from it to the driveway, are unchanged
except that the walk on the terrace which was then covered
with beautiful white shells now presents a less poetic, but more
durable, surface of gray concrete. At that time the principal
entrance to the grounds was at the termination of the avenue
bordered by evergreen trees. These were planted by the Fathers
soon after Father Mazzuchelli gave up the college; they still
rear their stately forms skyward and make " the Pinery " a
distinctive feature of St. Clara's immediate environment. East
of " the Pinery " is a bit of low land through which there ran,
in early years, a small stream of crystal waters having its
source in a spring that, imprisoned in a rough stone structure
called the Spring House, kept the butter and milk cool, and
supplied the entire household with drinking water.

Poetic reflections and romantic comments might be made

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 95

on the varied fortunes and the many transformations of " the
old stone building," were it the subject of a novelist's pen.
Three times since it Was purchased by the Sisters it has been
remodeled to suit the changing requirements of an increasing
school and community, and its history is not yet closed.-
Planned and in part built by Father Mazzuchelli, in 1846, it
served as a Novitiate House for Dominican Missionaries until
1849. ^^ 1855 it was completed by Rev. J. Jarboe, O.P., and
from 1849 until 1867 it was a college for boys. Purchased by
the Sisters in 1867, it served as both convent and academy
until 1882; fromf that date until 1901 it was used almost
entirely as a convent; since 1901 it has formed a department
of the academy and the community does not use any part of it.

Its old gray walls must be permeated with psychical
essences. If these could be materialized and made to speak as
rational beings, how varied and how impressive the stories they
would tell of the years so rich and fruitful that have elapsed
between 1846 and 1904.

The First Ten Years at Sinsinawa. — The placing of
the foundation stones is at once the most difficult and the most
important work to be accomplished in the building of any
massive material structure. Of the erection of intellectual and
spiritual edifices this is no less true. In the establishment of
religious and educational institutions, the beginning is always
a time of arduous struggle against a multitude of opposing
forces.

The first ten years at Sinsinawa were marked by those
severe labors, excessive hardships, and torturing inconveniences
that have been experienced by every well established com-
munity in the days of its youth. And yet, no other years of
those spent at the IMound are so warmly and lovingly remem-
bered by the Sisters who have survived them.

Memory cherishes the rugged virtues of those times, and
rejoices in a success based upon an almost heroic endurance
of physical stress and mental strain. There was a woeful
absence of reasonable recreation, of permissible rest, and of
advisable comforts for the body ; while the soul received its

96 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

needed grace and strength directly from God, as it were, for
the mediums He loves to use were not then available : spiritual
privileges were few, and consisted in the essentials commanded
by the Church. Yet through all those trying years there was
a spirit of joy, of love, and of unity, that rendered every labor
easy, and every hardship sweet.

The pupils of those years, because of the limited accommo-
dations, were brought into close contact with the community,
and had favorable opportunities to observe the spirit of devo-
tion and self-sacrifice that animated its members, hence the bond
between them and the Sisters was of a deep and tender nature
that has been to both, through all the intervening years, a joy
and a benediction. The school prospered. The very first year
at the Mound it numbered one hundred and fifteen pupils, and
among them, ten states, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois,
Nebraska, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and
Georgia, were represented. During the first ten years, 1867 to
1877, besides the above states, California, Dakota, Colorado,
Michigan, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut
were represented. In recent years Montana, Wyoming, New
Mexico, Washington, District of Columbia and Canada have
been added to the list of St. Clara's patrons.

During this first decade the community had been steadily
increasing its numbers and rapidly extending the field of its
labors ; eighty-five new members had been received and sixteen
new foundations had been made. These new missions were the
Immaculate Conception Convent, in North Chicago; St.
Joseph's, in Mineral Point, Wisconsin; St. Mary's of the
Lake, Kenosha, Wisconsin ; St. Clement's, Galena, Illinois ;
St. Albertus, Waukegan, Illinois ; St. Regina's, Madison, Wis-
consin; St. Catherine's, Austin, Minnesota; St. Mary's, Free-
port, Illinois ; St. Jarlath's, West Chicago ; St. Mary's, Dixon,
Illinois ; St. Joseph's, Bloomington, Illinois ; St. Mary's,
Whitewater, Wisconsin; St. Mary's, Evanston, Illinois, and
St. Patrick's, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

For the first three years at Sinsinawa the commJunity was
spared any loss by death, but, in 1870 and in 1872, Sister

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 97

Ambrose McNamara and Sister Genevieve Reynolds, both
eminently lovely in character and gifted in mind, were stricken
with quick consumption and died in the midst of their useful-
ness. Both were young in years and in religion, and both had
distinguished themselves not only as pupils of " old St. Clara,"
in Benton, but as efficient members of the community at Sin-
sinawa. Their loss was a grievous trial.

Only two others died during the period of ten years, two
novices, Sister Emerentia Welsh, a dear child only nineteen
years of age, and Sister Elegius Braley, aged twenty- four
years, a noble woman of generous nature, who is remembered
not only among St. Clara's members, but among her benefac-
tors, for it was means bequeathed by her to the community that
enabled them to build the principal part of the present academy.

As this first term of years drew to a close, St. Clara's com-
munity began to rise above the mere drudgery of life, and to
look upwards to the attainment of those things which, as
Dominicans, they had inherited from a holy and honorable
ancestry.

The Visit of St. Clara's Superiors to Rome. — The
notable increase of the number of Branch H'ouses widely
scattered through the Western states, had created among the
Mission Sisters a desire that some definite and binding law
might be made governing their dependence upon St. Clara
Convent. The community felt that this momentous question
could be best presented to the Dominican authorities in Rome
by the Superiors of the community in person, hence Mother
Emily, Prioress, and Sister Alberta, sub-Prioress, visited the
Eternal City, in the autumn of 1877, for this purpose.

Everything that could contribute to their comfort and
expedite their mission was arranged for them through the
generous eflforts of the Dominican Fathers at the Alinerva.
They also received many kind attentions from the Irish Domini-
cans at San Clemente, where dwelt, at that time, the widely
known and greatly revered, Father Malooly, O.P.

Their acquaintance with the Italian language, first made
under Father Mazzuchelli's tuition, was an advantage that

98 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

greatly lessened their loneliness in a strange land, and hastened
very considerably the accomplishrnent of their mission to Rome.
Their messages from abroad to the Sisters at St. Clara, though
not without minor tones of homesickness, were full of encour-
agement and of a great spiritual joy. From one of these letters,
sent after their audience with our Holy Father the Pope, the
following extract is taken : " This has been one of the memor-
able days of our life, one to be treasured as a sweet remem-
brance for future years, when those who come after us will
read with joy and pride the special blessing sent by Pius IX.
to his children at St. Clara. This morning the Very Rev.
Father San Vito told us that he would present us to the Holy
Father. At eleven, we went to the Minerva, where we found
that we were not to be alone, for, as the Very Rev. Father said,
we had ' a corona of Dominicans ' to accompany us." Here
follows an eloquent description of the Vatican and of its saintly
inmate. Then : " Had St. Peter been in our midst we could
not have felt a more confiding faith, a more reverential love,
than we experienced when Pius IX. appeared before us. Our
good friend, the Very Rev. Father San Vito, was at our side
securing special blessings for all in the Dominican group and
special words of encouragement for the two Sisters whom he
said the spirit of Religion had led across the seas. When told
that we were from America, the Holy Father showed the great-
est interest, and after speaking of St. Dominic and of the power
of the Holy Rosary, gave us the Apostolic Benediction."

A successor to the Most Rev. A. V. Jandel, Master General
of the Dominican Order, recently deceased, had not yet been
elected. The Vicar General, Very Rev. J. M. San Vito, gov-
erned the Order in the mean time, and to him the American
Sisters were indebted for many signal favors, and for an untir-
ing interest in the affairs that had occasioned their visit to
Rome. It was he who obtained for them the audience with
the Holy Father. He also secured their admission to the
Roman convents of enclosed Dominican Nuns, that they might
see the observance of the Dominican Rule in its perfection.

Moreover, in response to the petition of the Mission com-

The Convent Tower from Which Peai.s Forth the Great Beli, 'Albertus Magnus'

The Old Spring House
'Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep."

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 99

munities, that they might be secured in their dependence upon
St. Clara's Convent, he constituted the Mother ELouse at Sin-
sinawa and its Branch Houses, in various dioceses of America,
a united body, and named it *' The Dominican Congregation of
the Most Holy Rosary."

In memory of the conferring of this beautiful title upon
their congregation, the Sisters brought with them from Rome
a copy of Sassoferrato's masterpiece, " Our Lady of the Rosary,
with St. Dominic and St. Catherine." This picture is now
venerated in St. Qara's chapel.

The two Sisters who had journeyed so far to secure the
stability and the religious advancement of their community had
seen, on their way to Rome, the effectual working of the Rule
in a well-known convent, where they had the pleasure and the
advantage of a short sojourn. This was the House at Stone,
England, where dwells a community of the Third Order of
St. Dominic, much like our own in its circumstances and
requirements.

This visit to the convent of Mother Margaret Halloran,
the home of Mother Raphael Drane, and of a community
widely known for its fervent zeal in good works of all kinds,
and for its staunch loyalty to Dominican traditions, produced
in the hearts of the two American religious a sincere and lov-
ing veneration for their English Sisters, and also an increased
esteem for the superior opportunities enjoyed by their own
community, in its work for souls, in glorious, free America.

In connection with their visit to England, the Sisters recall
with peculiar pleasure the gracious kindness of Cardinal
Howard.

Not content with having obtained so many favors for the
voluntary exiles, the Very Rev. Father San Vito gave serious
attention to the consideration of the Constitutions by which the
Congregation of the Holy Rosary would in future be governed.
His counsel and direction in regard to the adaptation of the
Rule to new conditions were most valuable to the Superiors,
in this their most responsible undertaking.

The blessed sojourn of the Superiors in Rome and their

loo GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

happy return to America, bearing with them many sacred gifts
and privileges for the community, seemed to open a new era
in the history of St. Clara.

The adaptation of the Rule to the government of a con-
gregation, instead of a community, was immediately put in
operation. The compiling of the Constitutions, and the test-
ing of their practicability, awakened every mind to their impor-
tance, and stirred every heart with zeal for their solemn
approval by the Church. A delay in obtaining the much-
desired approval was occasioned, however, from time to time
by the death of important personages who, as friends of the
community, were particularly interested in the matter, or who
by virtue of their office were concerned in hastening it to
a happy issue. His Holiness Pius IX. died just after the
Sisters left Rome. Then the Very Rev. Father San Vito, O.P.,
the Very Rev. Father Bianchi, O.P., and His Eminence
Cardinal Howard were summoned by death to leave their broad
fields of sacred usefulness. Thus were the Sisters deprived of
the most earnest promoters of their cause. But before long
new friends began to put forth helpful hands, and the hopes
of the community approached realization.

In 1881, accompanied by his Socius, Rev. J. J. Carberry,
O.P., afterwards Bishop of Hamilton, Ontario, the Most Rev.
Joseph Maria Larroca, the recently elected Master General of
the Order of Preachers, visited St. Clara, and, showing the
profoundest interest in everything concerning the institution
and the community, expressed his paternal pleasure that an
American branch, so robust and wide-spreading, should be
drawing its sustenance from the venerable Dominican tree
firmly rooted for centuries in the City of the Popes.

To have become united with the very source of Dominican
life and principle, and to have been placed in intimate com-
munication with the fountainhead of Dominican traditions was
the attainment of the community's highest earthly ambition,
as it was also the realization of one of Father Mazzuchelli's
highest ideals for the institute he had founded.

The White Habit. — After the return of the Superiors

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS loi

from Rome, the exact observance of the beautiful Dominican
customs in the recitation of the office, and the wearing of the
white habit were among the first evidences of the community's
advancement towards its long-cherished desire for conformity
to the letter as well as to the spirit of Dominican customs.

August 4, 1880, was a memorable day for the Dominican
Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary, for it restored to its
members the beloved habit of the Order, and made them in
appearance, as well as in heart and mind, true daughters of St.
Dominic.

Many of the Mission Sisters had assembled at the Mother
House for the annual retreat; others made the retreat at
Bethlehem Academy, Faribault, Minnesota, and at the Con-
vent of the Immaculate Conception, Chicago, Illinois, At St.
Clara, on the morning of August 4th, the feast of St. Dominic,
the retreat closed after the first Mass. The Sisters had received
Holy Communion, dressed in the complete Dominican habit,
which consists of a white robe, white scapular, black mantle,
and black veil, with white lining. Later in the morning there
was a Solemn High Mass, after which ten young ladies began
their novitiate by being clothed in the white habit and receiving
the white veil.

Rt. Rev. T. L. Grace, O.P., Bishop of St. Paul, Minnesota,
was the celebrant of the Mass; Father Joseph Jarboe, O.P.,
was deacon; Father M. Lilly, O.P., sub-deacon; Father J.
Collins, O.P., master of ceremonies ; and the sermon was
preached by the eloquent Bishop of Dubuque, Rt. Rev. J. J.
Hennessy, D.D.

In the afternoon, the Convent Cemetery at Sinsinawa was
consecrated by Bishop Grace, assisted by Bishop Hennessy.
Previous to this time, the deceased Sisters had been taken to
Benton for burial ; since August 4, 1880, they have been
interred at Sinsinawa, but always they have been buried in the
white habit, even when the community wore the black.

A pleasant reunion in the evening, after Benediction of the
Most Blessed Sacrament, closed this most happy day at the
Mother House.

I02 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

In Faribault, where the Sisters from the Minnesota houses
were assembled, the beautiful occasion was celebrated with
great solemnity and joy. In Chicago the Sisters from the
houses in that diocese were gathered at the Convent of the
Immaculate Conception. There was Solemn High Mass at ten
o'clock in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, of which
Rev. P. T. Butler, of saintly memory, was then pastor. Very
Rev. Dr. McMullen, at that time administrator of the Chicago
Diocese, was the celebrant; Rev. Thomas Cashman, pastor of
St. Jarlath's Church, was deacon; Rev. A. Bergeron, now
pastor of the Church of Notre Dame, was sub-deacon; Rev.
D. Riordan, pastor of St. Elizabeth's Church, then Chancellor
of the Diocese, was master of ceremonies, and preached to a
congregation that filled the sacred edifice to its utmost capacity.

Thus did Holy Mother Church aid her lowly religious
children. Home Sisters and Mission Sisters, with the glory
of her ritual and the generous kindness of her clergy, to cele-
brate befittingly the all-important event of their adoption of
the white robe that has been worn by Dominicans in all parts
of the world for seven hundred years. May it be worn as long
a time by Dominicans at the Mound. For Sinsinawa would
seem to have been especially called into existence to serve
as the location of a religious and educational institution, so
perfectly is it adapted to all the needs of such an establishment,
and to all the requirements of its inmates, whether as to their
necessities, their tastes, or their pleasures.

For the home of a Dominican community the spot is ideal,
affording convenience for strict observance of the Rule, and
opportunity for the noble development of body and soul.

At Sinsinawa, nature especially rich in her beauty and
lavish in the bestowal of her gifts, aids powerfully in uplifting
the heart and inspiring the soul of the religious. A mani-
festation of this sanctifying intimacy with nature may be seen
in the mystic loveliness of summer-vacation evenings. Groups
of white-robed Sisters gather here and there on the lawn,
under the trees, on the grassy slopes of the Mound, amid the
gray limestone rocks, or among the graves in the cemetery,

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 103

making beautiful pictures that impress themselves forever on
the memory of the world-weary hearts of chance visitors.

The Second Decade of Years. — The old stone building,
so commodious at first, had become gradually crowded and
inconvenient ; year after year, the necessity for a new academy
became more and more apparent.

The ground was broken in 1880 for its foundation, and the
walls were beginning to rise at the time of the Master General's
visit in 1881. Qr^ the feast of All Dominican Saints, Novem-
ber 9, 1882, the building was complete, and was dedicated with
solemn ceremonies. In a sense it was consecrated, so great was
the number of Masses offered in the new chapel by the many
clergymen, friends of the institution, who had assembled at St.
Clara to assist in celebrating the great occasion of the presenta-
tion of her new building to God.

Every part of the great brick edifice was blest, even the
golden cross on the summit of the tower was reached by ladder
and sprinkled with Holy Water, and the bell within the tower
was christened. This bell, inscribed with its name '* Albertus
Magnus," was a present to Sister Alberta Duffy from a number
of young men whom she had taught more than ten years
before, as Sunday School pupils and Sodality boys, in Benton.
The bell still sends forth its solemn peal, over the Mound
and through the valleys at its base, announcing the Angelus,
the daily Mass, and the evening Office. For the burial of the
dead it tolls, and for the reception and profession of new mem-
bers it peals forth joyously, but ever and always, it speaks to
the old Sisters of Sister Alberta and the generous boys.

Following the dedication came the exodus of the pupils
from the old building to the new one, leaving the former almost
entirely to the use of the Sisters. The school was reorganized
and the attendance became greatly increased. The beauty of
the grounds which had been almost entirely demolished by the
work on the building, was speedily restored under the efficient
superintendence of Sister ]\Iagdalen Madigan, whose inde-
fatigable attention had materially aided in bringing the new
building to a satisfactory completion.

I04 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

In the midst of their increased prosperity, St. Clara's
inmates were called upon to endure a great sorrow. In August,
1883, Sister Alberta, sub-Prioress and Mistress of Novices,
beloved of the community and the school, fell seriously ill.
For four months she suffered with heroic patience the torture
of unceasing pain, and on the morning of December 4th, she
gave her grand soul into the hands of God.

Her gifted pen would never again express the noble
thoughts of her beautiful mind. The hands that had wrought
so skillfully in the fields of beauty, and had so often woven
loving adornment about the Altar of God, were cold and life-
less. The glorious voice that had never been spared in the
innocent entertainment or spiritual elevation of the human
heart, was silent. For twenty years she had been associated
with St. Qara's nearest and dearest interests. Amid all the
hopes and fears, the hard endurance and the weary struggle,
that had followed Father Mazzuchelli's death, she and Mother
Emily had been companions. Her death seemed to close an era
in St. Clara's history.

The office, so long and so efficiently held by Sister Alberta
and made vacant by her death, was awaiting a new incumbent,
hence in the spring of 1884 Sister Reginald Keane, Superior
of St. Joseph's Convent, Bloomington, Illinois, was appointed
Mistress of Novices, and was elected sub-Prioress, a responsi-
bility to which she was re-elected each year until the first
General Chapter was held in 1889, after which she was
appointed Prioress of the Mother House for two successive
terms of three years each.

Painful trials were not wanting, nor were great difficulties
lacking, in the experience of the community during those years
of transition that elapsed between the visit to Rome and the
approval of the new Constitutions, but there was a wounded
right Hand supporting, and a wounded Heart consoling, while
the Heavenly Father blessed and guarded all.

In the mean time the home picture most familiar to the
gaze and to the memory of the Sisters was the venerable form
of Sister Ignatia Fitzpatrick, bending before the pictures of

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 105

the Stations of the Cross. At three o'clock in the morning
wakeful persons would hear her stealing very quietly from
the dormitory to the chapel. At that early hour she began her
daily round of prayer, and no one ever discovered just how
many times, between three in the morning and eight in the
evening, she went " round the Stations," nor how often she
" said her beads," but all the Sisters knew that, excepting at
those times when the regular routine of the house required the
whole community to assemble elsewhere, there was no hour
when one might not find the dear little old Sister in the chapel.
She died quite suddenly but fully prepared, on May 14, 1886.
Of the original four, " the corner-stones," she was the second to
die. She had labored for thirteen years at '* the Mound," when
the boys' college was there, and subsequently, for at least eigh-
teen years, she performed responsible duties in the convent at
Benton. Then, relieved of all labors and duties, she took up
her abode in the Mother House, at Sinsinawa, and there for
fifteen years, she prayed almost constantly. Death could not
surprise one like her, however suddenly it might make its
appearance.

Joy and sadness are ever succeeding each other in this
life. While yet grieving for Sister Ignatia, the Sisters began
to plan for an event, in which no one would have been more
interested than the dear old Sister herself, had she lived. This
was the Silver Jubilee of St. Clara's beloved Superior.

On August 15, 1886, occurred the twenty-fifth anniversary
of the religious profession of Sister M. Emily Power, who
had been for nineteen years the Prioress of St. Clara's com-
munity. Governing the Sisterhood with loving devotedness
she had been the bond under God that had held them together,
in harmony and in zealous labor, during the critical period of
the community's severe struggles with poverty and death. The
Sisters felt that her Jubilee could not be celebrated with too
much solemnity, nor with too much exultant joy, hence on her
patronal feast day, August 17th, many Sisters representing the
branch houses, joined the Hpme Sisters at St. Clara, and, in
union with many friends among the clergy and the laity, did

io6 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

honor to the event by prayer, by affectionate congratulations,
by earnest good wishes, and by the presentation of beautiful
and costly gifts.

The offering of many Masses sanctified the early hours
of the blessed day, and a cable from Rome, " The Holy Father
and the Master General bless the Jubilee of Mother Emily,"
made all hearts glad.

At intervals throughout the day dispatches came bearing
the greetings and congratulations of many friends. At the
Benediction Service in the evening, was used, for the first time,
the handsome monstrance, still in use, one of the costliest and
most acceptable of the many rich Jubilee gifts.

After the banquet in the evening a program of vocal and
instrumental music was beautifully rendered. The entertain-
ment closed with the reading of the addresses presented in
behalf of the various Mission Communities then existing.

These written tokens of love and respect were as follows :

(Only one introduction is sriven, as all were alike, except the name of the diocese.)

From the Dominican Sisters of the Diocese of St. Paul to
Sister M. Emily, Superior of the Congregation of the
Most Holy Rosary —

Greetings — The Divine Sufferer lifts to H^is Sacred Heart
to-day a cross twined with the flowers and thorns of twenty-
five years of patient self-sacrifice and of heroic devotion to
duty. That divine love will transform this cross into a glorious,
eternal crown is the belief and hope, dear Mother, of your lov-
ing Sisters of the Diocese of St. Paul.

Greetings — A garland of twenty-five lilies is laid at our
Lord's feet to-day. That their golden pollen may be scattered
over many earth-gardens in years to come, and that their fra-
grance may delight you during your eternal beatitude, dear
Mother, is the wish of your devoted Sisters of the Arch-
diocese of Chicago.

Greetings — A halo of twenty-five beams of radiant light,
the reflection of twenty-five years of God's special love, ilium-

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 107

ines to-day our Mother's brow. That this brightness is the
promise of an unfading and eternal glory is the belief and
hope, dear Mother, of your devoted Sisters of the Diocese of
Green Bay.

Greetings — As we gaze through the silvery mists that lie
between us and the golden past, we hear Memory's voice
sweetly and solemnly repeating a life poem of twenty-five
thrilling stanzas, each of the twelve fair lines a history in itself ;
each of the thirty words an essential part of the general har-
mony ; the twenty-four syllables but lovely divisions of the
perfect whole ; the sixty letters of each word the symbols of
sounds dear to the ear of God. The noontide splendor of
earthly existence, a promise of glowing sunset hues, is shining
on this poem, inscribed on the tablets of the Recording Angel,
and while rejoicing in the perfect day, we look with hopeful-
ness and fond trust to the dawn of that other day which shall
have no end, and during which earth's sacred poems will be
repeated by the saints, and earth's holy hymns chanted by
angelic choirs. May we all then meet, dear Mother, to cele-
brate for eternity a heavenly Jubilee. This is the wish of your
faithful children of the Diocese of Peoria.

Greetings — ■ The Divine Master garners to-day twenty-
five sheaves of priceless grain, each head laden with rich
treasures of seed, the harvest of twenty-five laborious years.
Labor there must have been to make the golden grain so rich
and abundant, labor of willing human hands, the moisture of
human tears, and the sunshine of God's love and grace. That
we may all be united with you, dear Mother, at the Eternal
Banquet, is the wish of your exiled children of the distant
Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The Greetings of the Home Sisters and of the Mission
Sisters laboring in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, were em-
bodied in the address made on the presentation to Mother
Emily, from the whole congregation, of side altars for the new
chapel.

io8 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

Among the numerous beautiful gifts of silver and of gold for
the chapel were two personal offerings of remarkable beauty.
One was a memorial album, of folio size, very richly bound,
containing a brief history of St. Clara's Academy, of the com-
munity, and of the Branch Houses. The printing is entirely
ornamental penwork, and the margins of each page are beauti-
fully and artistically illuminated, after the manner of the grand
monastic work of the Middle Ages. The other personal gift
was a Spiritual Bouquet, an illuminated, pen-printed record
of the almost numberless prayers and sacred offerings that
had been made for the beloved Superior during her Jubilee
year. Next to the altars for the service of God, this sweet
offering of faithful, reverent affection was the most precious
of the Jubilee gifts. This occasion marked with a holy, happy
character the close of another ten years of St. Clara's history
at the Mound.

During this second decade of the community's existence at
Sinsinawa, the following Branch Houses had been opened:
the Holy Rosary Convent, Minneapolis, Minnesota ; St. Mary's,
El Paso, Illinois; St. Augustine's, Chilton, Wisconsin; Our
Lady of Perpetual Help, Rockford, Illinois ; St. Thomas', Hyde
Park, Chicago ; St. James', Lemont, Illinois ; Sacred Heart of
Mary Academy, Washington, D. C. ; and Sacred Heart Acad-
emy (Edgewood), Madison, Wisconsin.

Space does not permit a special mention of each Sister who
has been called to eternal rest. We have confined ourselves
to the mention of those who, having received the habit from
Father Mazzuchelli, might be ranked with the founders of the
community.

On the beautiful feast of the Immaculate Conception, in the
year 1888, the Mission community of St. Joseph's Academy, in
Holy Trinity parish, Bloomington, Illinois, was cast into pro-
found grief by the death of their Superior, Sister Imelda
Hertsog. She was one of the first little band of Sisters who
aided in the advancement of St. Clara's Academy in Benton,
Her fine intellectual powers and her musical gifts had rendered

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 109

her a most valuable member, whose place, left vacant by death,
it was difficult to fill.

Death, so gracious as to the numbers he claimed during the
first ten years at the Mound, seemed to have his revenge in
this decade, from 1877 to 1888, for he reaped a perfect harvest
of gifted young Sisters, all from the missions, diminishing
the community on earth by twenty members. Conditions in
Western towns and hom'es have changed ; school buildings
have improved, so also has the health of the Sisters, and the
result is an increased longevity. Epochs during which death
seems to triumph have been a feature of the history of every
community, civil as well as religious.

The Sisterhood at Sinsinawa had been increased, from 1877
to 1888, by the reception of one hundred and sixty-four new
members. The school had steadily advanced in numbers and
in educational attainments, the result of increased physical
comforts, and of multiplied intellectual advantages.

The Third Decade of Years. — For twenty-five years the
feast of Blessed Emily Bicchieri, August 17th, had been cele-
brated with special joy by St. Clara's community, because of
its patronal relation to a beloved Superior. In 1888, a new
glory was added to its beautiful significance, for on that date,
as may be seen by referring to the chapter on the Rule, the
Constitutions were signed by Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect of the
Propaganda, who thereby witnessed to the fact that our Holy
Father, Leo XIII., had given them his approval, on July 29th
of that same year.

When the glad news reached the Sisters, there was great
rejoicing and many fervent expressions of deep gratitude to
God arose from every heart. The event was prayerfully and
joyfully celebrated in all the Houses of the Congregation.

The decree of approval did not reach St. Clara until after
the Sisters who were at the Mother House for the summer
vacation had dispersed to the various mission schools, hence
all formalities relating to the matter were postponed till the
following year, when the first General Chapter of the Con-

no GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

gregation took place, on August lo, 1889, at St. Clara Convent,
the Mother House of the Dominican Congregation of the Most
Holy Rosary. In accordance with instructions received from
the Procurator General, Very Rev. Father Bianchi, all members
who had been professed three or more years, constituted the
Vocals in this Chapter.

The Mass of the Holy Ghost wias celebrated, at which all
the Vocals received Holy Communion. At 9 a. m., at the sound
of the convent bell, they assembled in the chapter-room and
proceeded to the election, at which Rev. J. A. Bokel, O.P.,
presided. Sister M. Emily Power was elected Mother General
of the Congregation. At the close of the election the official
statement of the proceedings was sent to His Eminence Car-
dinal Mazzella, Protector of the Congregation.

In an early and most kindly reply the Cardinal Protector
assured the community of his warm interest in all that con-
cerned the Dominican Congregation of the Most Holy Rosary,
at Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, and informed the Sisters that Mother
Emily's election had been confirmed by the Sacred Congrega-
tion of the Propaganda.

The spiritual structure of the Sisterhood at Sinsinawa
having been placed on so solid a foundation of unity among
themselves, and of union with the Order in Rome, temporal
requirements once more engaged the attention of the authori-
ties at the Mother House.

Among the material improvements made at Sinsinawa none
ranks higher in importance than the construction of a reservoir,
and the establishment of an admirable system of waterworks.

The former was completed and the latter put in operation
in the summer of 1889, and were widely mentioned in the public
press. The following is quoted from a Dubuque paper :

" In addition to the commodious buildings, beautiful
grounds, and grand surroundings, the Dominican institution
at Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, has a system of waterworks equal
to that of any city in the United States. The quality of the
water is most excellent, and besides the sanitary advantages

A View of the Buildings from Top of the Mound

The College Campus

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS m

arising from its plentifulness, there is one still greater in the
absolute security it affords against loss of life by fire.

" The plant consists of a complete system of water-mains,
anti-freezing hydrants, hose-pipes, play-pipes, house-hose, etc.
The reservoir is on the summit of the Mound, two hundred feet
above the level on which the building stands, which gives a
natural pressure that, in case of fire, would force the water
over the roof. The reservoir is partly blasted out of solid rock,
and is built up in stone masonry with an arch of brick. The
whole is lined with cement. The capacity of the reservoir is
one hundred thousand gallons, and it is filled by steam power
from two artesian wells, each five hundred feet deep."

The system of waterworks has an additional value in the
fact that it makes possible the presence of fountains on the
grounds, and favors the growth of the rare shrubs and the
abundance of flowers that border the beautiful terraces and
lawns.

No sooner was the much needed supply of water secured
than other necessities required attention.

In the following year, an addition to the academy building
became an imperative need. It required courage and a great
trust in Divine Providence to incur further indebtedness so
soon after the completion of the costly waterworks, but the
demand for more room was too urgent to admit of any hesita-
tion or delay. In 1890, the foundation of a large addition of
brick was begun, and the new structure was ready for use in
1892.

Only such events took place during the next three years as
are recorded by angels. The unceasing round of duties in
school and in choir took its peaceful way, counting for eternity,
and but little noticed by time.

In the spring of 1895 the interest of the whole congregation
was awakened in consideration of the important fact that the
Mother General's term of office would expire that summer.

On May 5th the letter of Convocation to the second General
Chapter was sent to the various houses by the Mother General.

112 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

On August 10, 1895, Rev. A. O. Walker, O.P., presiding,
the election took place at St. Clara Convent, Sinsinawa, in
exact accordance with the requirements of the Rule. Sister
M. Emily Power was almost unanimously elected Mother Gen-
eral. The report of the Scrutineers and Mother Emily's letter
of acceptance were sent, as before, to the Cardinal Protector,
and in due time, the Confirmation of the Sacred Congregation
of the Propaganda was received.

After this, the second General Chapter, Mother M. Reginald
Keane having completed her second term as Prioress of St.
Clara Convent, was succeeded by Sister M. Bonaventure Tracy,
who had been Mistress of Novices for six years. Her final
term as Prioress expires with the Jubilee Year. .

To increase the buildings at Sinsinawa has always been
to increase the school, so the demand for more space seems to
be unceasing.

The structure of 1882 and 1892 soon proved to be insuffi-
cient, therefore in 1897 the refectory, recreation-room, and
chapel, the principal parts of three stories of the structure of
1882, were considerably enlarged by extending them north-
ward, thus supplying, temporarily at least, the increased accom-
modation required.

An Unfinished Decade. — In the summer of 1898
occurred an event unique in the history of the community, an
event of holy import, symbolic of life's highest value, as esti-
mated in coin of the Kingdom of Heaven. On August 4th
was celebrated the Golden Jubilee of Sister Josephine Cahill
and Sister Louise Hayden. Each of them numbered many
friends among both clergy and laity, hence the concourse of
guests was great while the religious services and ceremonies
were most impressive. Gifts came from friends and from
former pupils, scattered far and wide, gifts bearing assurances
of loving regard and grateful remembrance. Sister Louise,
possessing all her powers, physical and mental, still enjoys life
and fulfils some easy duties at St. Clara; Sister Josephine,
as will be stated later with details, went to her eternal reward
five years after her Jubilee.

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 113

On the 1 6th of August of this same year, dear Sister
Frances McGurk, one of the beloved old Sisters of Benton,
after years of noble endurance of constant pain, supplemented
by a long, severe illness, gave her soul into the hands of God,
by a holy, peaceful death.

The benefit of the school had been the chief consideration
with the Sisters for many years ; now the great number of
candidates in the Novitiate: and the increasing needs of the
Normal School for their training made it necessary to think
of the requirements of the community.

It became evident that there must be another extension
of the buildings. This led to the erection of the new convent,
a noble structure of brick with stone trimmings, adjoining the
rock building on the east. The corner-stone, a gift from Rt.
Rev. J. J. Hennessy, Archbishop of Dubuque, was laid with
impressive ceremonies on August 4, 1899, by Rev. Wm. Horan,
Pastor of St. Mary's Church, Freeport, Illinois.

Adjoining the new convent on the east is the Sisters' Infirm-
ary, a building distinct in itself, with pleasant private rooms,
sunny porches, and a beautiful little chapel. The heating appa-
ratus and the supply of hot and cold water is independent of
that in the convent. All the rooms are comfortable and health-
ful, while a southeastern exposure renders the greater number
of them extremely pleasant.

The building of a residence for the chaplain had been long
in contemplation ; it was accomplished at last in 1899. The
Rectory is a beautiful little two-story brick edifice, supplied
with all the modern appliances for health and comfort. It is
also most charmingly located amid surroundings beautified by
nature's best and loveliest gifts.

Before the new convent reached completion death claimed
one who had taken a most lively interest in its erection. Sister
M. Gertrude Power, Mother General's sister, to whom Father
Mazzuchelli himself gave the religious habit in i860, died on
January 7, 1900. She had been a member of the Council of the
Community for twenty-four years by an unanimous yearly elec-
tion ; under the revised Constitutions she had been a member of

114 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

the Council of the Congregation for eleven years. Ab Superior
of Bethlehem Academy, Faribault, Minnesota, and as Mistress
of Novices at the Mother House, she, by her invincible charity,
her beautiful self-effacement, and her sterling good sense, both
sanctified and dignified her work, personal and official. An
enlightened piety and a genuine religious spirit distinguished
her at all times as an example worthy of close imitation, while
the gentle nobility and gracious sincerity of her character made
her the object of universal love and confidence.

Great would have been the holy elation of the dear, departed
Sisters of Benton days, so long associated in seeking to advance
the higher interests of the community, could they have been
present at the blessing of the new convent by His Grace Rt.
Rev. F. X. Katzer, Archbishop of Milwaukee, on the Feast
of St. Antoninus, O.P., May lo, 1900. Among the white-
robed religious and white- veiled novices, the purple-robed
prelate, accompanied by many priests, moved along the stately
corridors and up the wide stair-cases, until every room on
every floor had been blessed. On descending to the first floor,
at the close of these ceremonies, the procession left the convent
and took its way to the Sisters' cemetery, where, having
changed his brilliant vestments of white and gold for the black
and white of mourning. His Grace blest the great Crucifix that
had been erected a few weeks previous in the center of that
garden of peace eternal.

It is a common saying among religious people that no order
excels that of St. Dominic in generous fidelity to the souls of
the faithful departed. It was quite in keeping with this spirit
of loving loyalty that the holy dead were so sweetly remem-
bered in the midst of the community's great joy.

On the following morning the regular routine of duties
resumed its sway, but every heart was repeating the glad
refrain " At last our Sisters have a home." Yes, after long
years of patient endurance of many inconveniences and dis-
comforts, they have a blessed home, of comfort for the sick,
peace for the aged, and happiness for the young.

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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 115

So much had been done and Hfe had been such a busy
affair, the Sisters had scarcely reahzed the flight of years, and
it was almost with a feeling of surprise that they received the
letter of Convocation for the Third General Chapter, to be
held at St. Clara Convent in the summer of 1901. However,
they gave it very serious consideration, for Mother Emily's
two terms, of six years each, were about to expire, and it was
the universal wish of the Sisters that the time should be
extended.

When August loth arrived. His Grace of Milwaukee was
again the honored guest of St. Clara's community; he pro-
longed his stay for several days, and seemed loath to depart,
though neither he nor the Sisters anticipated the sad fact that
it was his farewell visit to his many friends at St. Clara. He
presided at the Third General Chapter, and Mother Emily
Power was unanimously elected.

Previous to this election, the Prioness of the Mother House
and the Superiors of the Branch Houses, with the approval of
their communities, petitioned through the Cardinal Protector,
for a dispensation that they might elect Sister M. Emily Power
for a third term of six years. The Sacred Congregation of the
Propaganda granted the dispensation in advance, and con-
firmed the election of the Mother General soon after the
General Chapter.

In the mean time her labors and her responsibilities had
been constantly increasing, nor have they become less onerous
during the past three years.

Rapid progress in educational methods, and the multiplica-
tion of intellectual requirements, demand that the heads of
institutions of learning shall be constantly active and alert.
The Faculty of St. Clara Academy have kept step with every
advancement made in the educational domain. Her teachers,
in the various departments, have been afforded every advantage
-requisite to fit them to rank among the best educators in the
land.

Her summer-vacation institutes, as well as her lecture

ii6 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

courses throughout the year, have been conducted by the most
experienced abihty and promising talent in the field. Her
course of study has always been comprehensive and thorough.
Years ago friends, well-informed regarding such matters,
suggested that St. Clara, because of the advanced course
pursued by her graduates, should rank as a college.

The demand for the higher education of woman becoming
no less urgent in Catholic circles than elsewhere, the faculty
decided, in 1900, that St. Clara should aid in satisfying that
demand.

Application having been made to the legislature of the
state for required powers and privileges, St. Clara College was
chartered in 1901 and opened in September, 1902, with a
freshman class of ten members and a sophomore class number-
ing twenty-six. At the Jubilee commencement, June, 1904, the
institution will confer for the first time the degree of Bachelor
of Arts.

In the vacation of 1902 preparation was made for the
accommodation of one hundred and fifty pupils ; in September
two hundred arrived. The students already occupied every
part of the three academy buildings, so this unexpected increase
in the school was provided for by giving over to the use of the
pupils the greater part of the first floor and the whole of the
third floor of the new convent. Additional space for sleeping-
rooms was gained by raising the roof of the stone building,
which transformed the two low-ceiled, bleak-looking rooms of
early days, into four bright, airy dormitories, affording ample
accommodation for at least fifty pupils in addition to those
already occupying the six large sleeping-apartments and the
many private rooms.

St. Clara's first year, 1902-1903, as a college will be memo-
rable for the brilliant success of the school and the marked
prosperity of the community. It is like other years in our
history, however, in having its dark hour and its mingling of
sorrow with joy. Among several losses by death there was
one that had a peculiar character of sadness.

o
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GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 117

In the early days of the community no figure was more
famihar to the people of the little town of Benton than Sister
Josephine's. To the house of sorrow, sickness, or death, she
was always sent, and to give comfort and consolation was her
special grace. She had a genius for sincere friendship, and
never lost sight of the boy or girl who had once enlisted her
sympathy or awakened her anxiety. The sinner found it almost
impossible to resist the influence of her frank rebukes or the
kindly sternness of her advice. Many a wanderer retraced his
steps at her request, and many a youth never wandered, because
heedful of her earnest warnings.

For fifty-five years she bore the cherished name " Sister
Josephine," and when on the evening of February i, 1903,
she peacefully closed her eyes in death, it seemed as if the last
link with the old life of holy memory had been severed.

During the period elapsing between 1888 and August, 1904,
the following Branch Houses have been established : St. John's
Convent, Plattsmouth, Nebraska ; Immaculate Conception Con-
vent, Spring Valley, Illinois ; St. Mary's, Appleton, Wisconsin ;
Holy Rosary, Denver, Colorado; Visitation Convent, South
Chicago ; St. Rose's, Milwaukee, Wisconsin ; St. Catherine's
Academy, Jackson, Nebraska ; Holy Rosary Convent, Kewanee,
Illinois ; St. Dominic's, Kansas City, Missouri ; St. Brendan's,
South Chicago; Sacred Heart Convent, Eagle Grove, Iowa;
Sacred Heart Academy, Rockwell, Iowa ; St. Thomas' Paro-
chial School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin ; and St. Patrick's, Bloom-
ington, Illinois.

During the years whose history has just been given death
has deprived the community of many devoted workers, beauti-
ful souls, so much needed on earth, according to human views,
that one wonders why God took them away in their earnest
youth, in their energetic prime, in their edifying old age. The
memory of them survives and continues their work in the lives
of those to whom it is an encouragement and an inspiration.

There are two calls, however, that thrill the heart of God's
chosen ones. The call from the Convent to Heaven has indeed
diminished our numbers, while strengthening our spirit, but

ii8 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

the call from the world to the convent has compensated us for
our sacred losses, and bountifully multiplied our resources by
the gift of a rapidly increasing membership distinguished by
that variety of talent, ability and virtue, that renders a teach-
ing community a bright bow of promise to the children of
God's Church.

CHAPTER X
THE THIRD ORDER OF ST. DOMINIC

THE RULE OF THE THIRD ORDER

The origin of the Third Order is well known to all devout
Catholics. Dominican Tertiaries are to be found everywhere.
Father Faber has called the Third Order the " Mystical Garden
of Saints " ; in it have bloomed such fragrant souls as Rose of
Lima, and Catherine, the lily of Siena.

It is with the members of this Order who dwell in convents
that we are at present concerned. Sisters of the Third Order
of St. Dominic were leading the conventual life as long ago as
1255. Scarcely thirty-five years after the death of St. Dominic,
saintly women gathered around Blessed Emily Bicchieri, that
they might make the vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience,
and lead a community life in the observance of the Rule of
St. Augustine, supplemented by the Constitutions of the Sisters
of Penance, instituted by the Blessed Dominic.

The Pope who had enrolled the venerable Founder among
the saints was still seated on the Chair of Peter when the first
Convent of the Sisters of the Third Order of St. Dominic
was established by Blessed Emily, in Vercelli, Italy, where a
Dominican Church and a monastery for priests already existed.
At all times since that period, convents of the Third Order
have multiplied in Italy and France. In America, since the
opening of the nineteenth century. Mother Houses of this
Order have been established in New York, Ohio, Kentucky,
Wisconsin, Illinois, California, and Texas.

In regard to the establishment of a Convent of the Third
Order in Wisconsin Father Mazzuchelli wrote to the Most Rev.
A. V. Jandel, Master General of the Order of Preachers, as
follows : " The promise made by our Holy Father St. Dominic,
over six hundred years ago, that we should grow numerous

119

I20 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

among the nations, and that he would help us with his prayers
before the Lord, has had its full accomplishment. The Sisters
of the Third Order, with a simple yet wise Rule, are, in their
services to the Church and in the excellent works of an active
life, superseding the enclosed Sisters of the Second Order, and
bid fair to become in America a great part of that numerous
family alluded to in the prophetic words of our holy Founder."
The ancient Rule of the Third Order, approved by various
Pontiffs, especially by Pope Gregory IX., Honorius IV., John
XXIL, Boniface IX., Innocent VIL, and Eugene IV., was
simply adapted to the government and direction of persons
united in one religious society or order, but living in the world
and engaged in every pursuit in life. When many Sisters of
this Order began, soon after St. Dominic's death, to live in con-
vents, they added to the Rule of St. Augustine such regula-
tions or constitutions as were needed for the good order of the
community and were best adapted to time or place, and to the
occupation of the Sisters. But while the constitutions were
and are thus liable to changes and amendments the approved
Rule itself, being, as it were, the ground work of the Order,
has remained for almost seven centuries unchanged.

THE RULE OF ST. AUGUSTINE

Long after the institution of St. Benedict had begun to
flourish in various parts of Europe, we hear of the Rule of
St. Augustine. The Holy Bishop of Hippo had written a
letter to certain nuns, giving them directions for their guidance
in their pursuit of perfection. This letter constitutes the
famous " Rule." Many orders and congregations founded
since the thirteenth century have adopted it, among these the
Dominicans stand foremost.

The four great monastic rules are those of St. Basil, St.
Benedict, St. Augustine, and St. Francis. These have been
variously adapted to the purposes of communities having some
special charitable aim or educational work in view.

Father Mazzuchelli selected from the Rule of the Third

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 121

Order such regulations and practices as suited the circum-
stances of the community in Benton. Having the approbation
of Most Rev. A. V. Jandel, Master General of the Order of
Preachers, of Rt. Rev. John M. Henni, Bishop of Milwaukee,
and of Rt. Rev. James Duggan, Bishop of Chicago, this Rule
was committed to the Sisters for their observance on Easter
Sunday, 1859, i^ Benton, Wisconsin.

This Rule having, under changed circumstances, become
inadequate, particularly as regarded the government of the
community, the Superiors were advised by the Very Rev.
Father San Vito, Vicar General of the Order, to base upon
the Rule of St. Augustine such a body of Constitutions as
would provide for the new requirements and aspirations of the
community, in its new form as a Congregation of Religious
Houses.

On the return of Mother Emily and Sister Alberta to St.
Clara, in March, 1878, the compilation of the Constitutions
was immediately put under discussion, and when the Superiors
of the various houses assembled in the vacation of that year
their suggestions were received. The work progressed slowly
and carefully, and every point was tested.

What was then done can be best presented by a reproduc-
tion of the Decrees and of the Preface of the printed Rule.

PREFACE OF THE BOOK OF THE RULE AND OF THE CONSTITUTIONS
OF THE DOMINICAN CONGREGATION OF THE
MOST HOLY ROSARY

The Rule of St. Augustine is taken from a letter written
by the Saint to a Convent of Nuns under his jurisdiction.
The epistle bears the number 211, and also 109, in the Edition
of the Benedictines, Paris, 1688. •

The Community of Sisters of the Third Order of St.
Dominic, bearing the name of the Congregation of the Most
Holy Rosary of the United States of America, from its founda-
tion, in 1846, by Very Rev. S. C. Mazzuchelli, at that time
Commissary Provincial of the Order of Preachers in these

122 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

United States, has followed the Constitutions of the Third
Order, compiled by him, with the approval of Most Rev. Father
Thomas Ancarani, Master General of the Order, and, in 1859,
of Most Rev. Father Alexander Vincent Jandel, Master Gen-
eral of the Order. This compendium of the Constitutions, the
text of which was supplemented and explained by full and
most lucid commentaries, sufficed under the wise, holy, and
paternal guidance of the venerable compiler for the needs of
the community for many years after his death. Subsequently,
the rapid growth of the community, the establishment of many
and distant Branch Houses, yearly increasing in number, and
located in widely separated dioceses, rendered necessary a more
comprehensive set of regulations. In 1877, two Sisters, duly
authorized by the council of the community, visited Rome, and,
after an audience with the Holy Father, Pius IX., of blessed
memory, assisted by the counsel and direction of Very Rev.
Father Joseph Maria San Vito, Vicar General of the Order,
proceeded to complete the design of compiling this book.
The Master General of the Order, Most Rev. F. B. Joseph
Maria Larroca, visiting our Mother House in 1881, was pleased
to give the work his paternal blessing and approval, urging
the utmost rapidity in its accomplishment consistent with care
and prudence.

In 1887 this body of Constitutions was submitted to His
Paternity, who placed it in the hands of Very Rev. Father
Marcolino Cicognani, Procurator General of the Order, who,
throughout the whole compilation, has assisted and encouraged
it with counsels, direction and most paternal and affectionate
solicitude, and to whom this entire congregation owes a debt
of gratitude which may never be forgotten.

The Very Rev. Procurator General laid the work before
the Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith early
in the year 1888, and on the 29th day of July, of that same
year, this congregation of the Most Holy Rosary, and these
constitutions, with emendations and additions from the hand
of the Very Rev. Procurator General, received the approba-

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 123

tion of the Holy See, in the following decree, dated the 17th
day of August.

The letter of the Very Rev. Procurator General conveying
this decree, contains these words of explanation : " This appro-
bation for three years is a formality, because the Sacred Con-
gregation is never accustomed to give definite approbation to
Constitutions the first time." Therefore, in obedience to the
Very Rev. Procurator General of the Order, these constitutions
were ordered to be printed with the decree ad triennium, and
with space provided for insertion of the Final Decree to be
given at the end of that period.

FIRST DECREE

The Superioress General of the Dominican Sisters of the
Third Order of Penance, of the Congregation of the Most
Holy Rosary, in the United States of America, has before,
with earnest prayers, petitioned the Sacred Congregation of
the Propagation of the Faith for the approbation, whether of
the institute or the constitutions. Moreover, since the afore-
said congregation, being widely diffused, flourishes under the
observance of the constitutions and its religious spirit, and
hath produced abundant fruits through the inspiration of
Divine grace, the Committee of Consultors, to whom is en-
trusted the office of examining new congregations and consti-
tutions, met on the twelfth day of July, 1888, for the discussion
of its merits and its needs. His Eminence Camillo Mazzella,
Cardinal Protector of the aforesaid congregation, presided.
The affair having been maturely considered, and regard being
had to the testimonial letters of many Bishops who had com-
mended these Sisters to the Sacred Congregation of the Propa-
gation of the Faith, it was resolved that the aforesaid institute
should receive final approval, but that the constitutions should
be approved for only three years, by way of trial ; certain cor-
rections and modifications were inserted, and were noted in the
adjoined copy. Moreover, in an audience of the twenty-ninth
day of July, 1888, this decision of the committee, having been

124 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

laid before our Most Holy Father, Leo XIIL, by Most Rev,
Dominico Jacobini, Archbishop of Tyre and Secretary of the
Sacred Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith, His
Holiness approved it and commanded the present decree to be
expedited to that effect.

Given at Rome from the Sacred Congregation of Propa-
ganda, on the seventeenth day of August, 1888.

(Seal) Joannes Card. Simeoni, Prsefectus.
Pro Secretary,
Zephyrinus Zitelli,
S. Off.

FINAL DECREE

In the year 1888 the Constitutions of the Dominican Sisters
of the Third Order of Penance of the Congregation of the
Most Holy Rosary, in the United States of North America,
who had their first origin at Sinsinawa, in the Archdiocese of
Milwaukee, were approved for three years, by way of trial, by
this Sacred Council of the Propagation of the Faith. But
since the aforesaid Sisters, whose distinguished labors, espe-
cially in the education of youth, are commended by the testi-
mony of many Bishops, had, shortly before, offered humble
petitions for the final approval of their constitutions, the execu-
tion of this office was entrusted to the committee appointed for
it, which is presided over by the Most Eminent and Reverend
Cardinal Camillo Mazzella. Therefore, since it seemed good
to this committee that the said Rules and Constitutions should
be definitely approved, with some modifications, however, noted
upon the annexed sheet, this statement was laid before our
Most Holy Father, Leo XIIL, by the undersigned Secretary
of this Sacred Congregation, in an audience of the thirtieth day
of April, and His Holiness ratified and confirmed it.

Given at Rome from the Sacred Congregation of the Propa-
gation of the Faith, on the fifth day of May, 1893.

(Seal) M. Cardinal Ledochowski, Prsef.
J. Aug., Abp. of Larissa,
Pro Secretary.

St. Dominic's Church

A frame structure erected by Fr. Samuel in 1845.
replaced by a brick edifice.

It has been

St. Catherine's Walk on the Novitiate Esplanade, i88c

AFTERWORD.

Much happens from dawn to sunset of an ordinary day —
much that is of infinite importance. By what proportion, then,
shall we find the value of the happenings of fifty years, with
their many circling months and their myriads of days?

Only in eternity can the problem be solved ; only the Creator
can express the relation of the divine assistance to the creature's
labor. To God be all the glory !

The life-pictures presented in the preceding chapters have
been drawn with a few free lines, clear, perhaps somewhat
sharp, like those of an etching. The reader has done the shad-
ing, according to the spirit of his interpretation of the outlines.
He gives his estimate of values when he shades, and much more
when he colors. We have no cause to dread the stroke of
pencil or brush in the hand of the reader who has let life's
discipline ennoble him.

Father Mazzuchelli's work, and still more his character,
must make an eloquent appeal to every noble, priestly soul, to
every honorable, manly heart; while his gracious personality
must interest and influence every mind capable of appreciating
its beauty and strength.

The progress that has been made by St. Clara's Institute
in fifty years differs but little, if at all, from that made by
hundreds of other institutions in this land of rapid development
and speedy growth. And yet, the celebration of its Golden
Jubilee has, for its multitude of friends, a peculiar interest, for
this Institute, venerable in its half century of existence, had
its origin in the thought of one universally esteemed, in his
time and place, by men of lofty mind. St. Clara's early years
bore the stamp of his greatness ; hence the years that followed
are interesting to those who have discernment of spirit.

As we have seen, St. Clara's first efforts for good were
made under the direction of a superior wisdom ; its first strug-

125

126 GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS

gles against evil were made under the bracing influence of a
sanctified will; and its first advance towards high ideals were
encouraged by the promptings of an eminently pure soul and
noble heart. Its subsequent history could not but bear the
sacred impress of these strong and holy beginnings.

The remembrance of them has been unfailing in giving
an impetus to the progress made in fifty years. The poet-priest
of the South has tunefully assured us that —

" The flowers of the future, tho' fragrant and fair,
With the past's withered leaflets can never compare;
For dear is each dead leaf — and dearer each thorn —
In the wreaths which the brows of our past years have worn."

" The flowers of the future " and " the past's withered leaf-
lets " will sweetly mingle in the Jubilee garlands, with which
the reverent hands of tried friends will soon bind St. Clara's
brow. The fragrance of the one and the brown sacredness of
the other will appeal to both heart and mind, for, on occasions
so fraught with holy memories and ardent hopes, we feel
intensely and think deeply. When our Jubilee Day dawns,
thought and feeling will merge into the question, " What does
it mean ? " " What does it commemorate, and what does it
anticipate ? " Bowing our heads before God's altar, and unit-
ing our hearts in prayer, while our Most Reverend Archbishop
solemnly pontificates, we shall learn, in part, from the Silent
Teacher in the Tabernacle, the answers to our queries.

Even now, questions arise, with eager interest, in the hearts
that are loyal to the memory of the past and true to the promise
of the future. "What is the spirit, the significance, the force
of such an occasion ? "

What calls together so many distinguished men and
women? The spirit of the past? The voice of the future?
Even so ; and more than these, the spirit of all Christian ages,
the voice of Religion! For St. Clara's Jubilee honor were a
small thing indeed did it not beam forth, among myriads of
others, as a ray from the Church's refulgent glory. Being a
part of that infinitude of splendor, who can presume to measure
its greatness. As for its intrinsic significance, only he may

"And ever there against the brooding sky.
The priestly pine-trees high
With Hfted hands invoke on vale and crest
Infinitudes of rest."

Where Sleep the Holy Dead

"Is not the mighty mind, that child of heaven:
By death enlarg'd, ennobled, deified?
Death but entombs the body; life the soul."

GOLDEN BELLS IN CONVENT TOWERS 127

define it who can tell us what fifty years of God-given time
may comprise of human effort and divine assistance.

Certain we are, that the finite mind cannot conceive, nor
the human tongue express, what the Golden Jubilee of a reli-
gious institute ought to mean to those who have come within
the circle of its influence.

And superlatively greater must be its meaning to those who
have reared the institute, found shelter under its roof, planted
seed in its mystic gardens and gathered fruit from its trees.

The Jubilee years do not stand for mere human endeavor,
even though graced with immortal powers and rewarded with
eternal results. We celebrate them, rejoice in them, preserve
the memory of them, because they stand, also, for things
divine ; for things called into being by the voice of God ; for
things done by the Master's wounded hand ; for things bearing
the print of His wounded feet ; for things that have responded
to the cry of His sacred Heart, and have been borne aloft by
correspondence with His divine grace.

And now — while golden bells ring from convent towers —
a solemn procession of fruit-laden Yesterdays merges into the
stately but most joyous procession of promise-laden To-mor-
rows. Go we forth to meet them !

ERRATA.

On page 103, read, regarding the bell, — She also re-
ceived handsome contributions from the young men of
St. Dominic's congregation at Sinsinawa.

On page 117, include among the branch houses, St.
John's Cathedral School for Boys, Milwaukee, Wis.; St.
Mark's Parochial School, Peoria, 111.; St. Joseph's, New
Hampton, Iowa; and the Sacred Heart School, Ojnaha,
Nebraska.

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Full text of "Golden bells in convent towers; the story of Father Samuel and Saint Clara, 1854-1904"

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